The Horned King and the Engines of Oblivion
by Arte of Warfare
Summary: Dark, divergent AU. Galactic oblivion is approaching. The last Namikaze, birthed in blood and fire, baptized in battle and treachery, is set adrift when his world is destroyed by its own hubris. Naruto, faced with the choice between being a puppet or a god, makes a decision that may save him—or damn him and the entire galaxy. The fate of the universe is in his bloodstained hands.
1. Chapter 1: The King's Fall

**A/N: Ah yes, the first chapter of the newly revised Memoirs. Only it's not the memoirs of an N7 anymore is it?**

**Most of you are probably wondering why I decided to rewrite and I think most of the answer lies in the Prologue. Oddly enough, I believed I had to dumb it down and when I tried, I really tried to smooth it out...but it didn't work. **

**A lot of people didn't get the vignette-style and became lost. I myself thought it clear-cut for the most part-but I will admit some parts perhaps didn't come off the way I intended. In the end, it ultimately didn't matter.**

**I wasn't telling the story I had set out to tell in the first place. **

**My Naruto has a divergent background, is very AU, and resembles Menma, Lelouch, or Jorg Ancrath more than anyone else. I believe, however, that canon Naruto, if pushed to the breaking point harder during his upbringing and molded by his brilliant father and mother (and various other...influences), would bring about a more exaggerated, charismatic, and overall darker personality than in canon. The original story I wrote did not do an adequate job of portraying the origins of the Naruto I wanted-thus the future chapters would not have worked out.**

**Hopefully, this story will. **

**Side-note: this chapter is a teaser, an _en medias res_. **

**The next chapter will not be out till I'm fully done plotting the story, so I ask you to speculate freely. There are a lot of hints hidden away in this first chapter. Chronologically-speaking though, THIS CHAPTER IS OUT OF CONTEXT. The next chapter is the BEGINNING of the first arc of the story. This falls somewhere in-between the first arc and the second arc of the story. BE WARNED. I don't know how much more I can emphasize that there is a LOT of back-story behind this beginning chapter. I will be forced to label you an idiot if you complain about this chapter being confusing. **

**If you do not heed these words, you are a fucking idiot and there is no hope for you. Please move on at that point because I'm catering to a more intelligent audience. May God (or whoever you believe in) have mercy on your soul.**

**PM if you want. Flames will be accepted and used to light the fires in my soul. **

**Cheers,**

**Arte of Warfare**

**P.S. I don't own the Mass Effect series or Naruto.**

* * *

_**Chapter 1: The King's Fall**_

"_I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire."  
― William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor_

**CE 2175, Cronos Station, Horsehead Nebula, Anadius; Unidentified CSV**

Namikaze Naruto

Naruto's destination loomed large in the viewscreen of his ship.

The previous owner of the frigate wouldn't be needing it after they accomplished their mission here. His face had a permanent smile on it as he continued looking out at the monolithic structure ahead of them. In space, the orbital facility hung like a colossal dagger; a dagger held in fixed orbit around the cold, dying star Anadius.

Around him in the conference room and connected crew lounge, his compatriots—most of them not even old enough to need a serious shave yet—sat every which way on any available surface, cleaning and priming guns, wiping blades, or tinkering with biotic amplifiers with a calm that called to mind soldiers on a mission of routine importance.

That impression would be the farthest thing from the truth.

Naruto could feel the stillness had a manic edge to it. This was no routine mission and still waters ran deep in his team. Naruto knew that better than anyone. They were his, heart and soul, after all. He'd earned their undying loyalty the hard way—not that he thought he deserved it. But it was useful—so he made sure to use them and made a point later to say a quiet word to each one.

He shifted in his command seat, wrapping his voluminous cloak about him for comfort against the chill of the metal compartment. Naruto preferred it icy and more akin to a meat locker than a custom-built ship designed for crew comforts—something the last owners of the ship were known for. The icy atmosphere kept him on his toes, something he'd learned from his Russian lieutenant, Angel, who frequently took swims in the icy waters of their home-base on the planet Despoina.

The commander of the ship buried his nose in the fabric and was forced to inhale the strong odors he simply couldn't get out; the metallic scent of blood and the pungent aroma of burnt metal and smoke deeply embedded in the now-scarlet piece of fabric. There was a history behind the clothing item and although he called it a cloak, it really was a long, tattered and raggedy banner that was once a solid yellow and gunmetal, with a large black symbol stitched in the center of the white facade.

It wasn't white anymore; the lifeblood of both foes and comrades made sure of that.

The piece was very much out of place, a slash of deep crimson color in an otherwise gray and lifeless ship and crew colored mostly in black and silver. His band, their flickering gazes resting occasionally on his cloak, was a constant reminder to him of the promises he'd made, of the grand purpose that had come out of the hell they'd left behind, and the person he'd been before he led them out. For Naruto, it was a painful reminder of the pact he'd made with himself; of the sacrifices he was willing to make and of the lengths he was willing to go to fulfill the promise he'd made to himself and to those in his band.

The fading emblem was almost unidentifiable by the sheer amount of blood stained deep in the fabric as it hadn't been a flag for years now. Frayed edges and long, jagged rips gave it a shroud-like quality as it settled around his dented and mismatched, but well-cared for armor. He'd spray-painted his armor a while ago, after they'd left their makeshift headquarters on Despoina, and the result was a bone-white and black, skeletal-looking ensemble.

He looked like a corpse trailing blood.

Combined with his armor, the whole ensemble made him a Frankenstein monster of different era's and genres; greaves and vambraces of a dead N7 they'd found in an abandoned colony, a breastplate of a Cerberus sharpshooter who thought he'd had the drop on him, and as for the helmet—well, the long, curving horns of bone that jutted up from his head, white-grey and still growing around his long, shaggy outgrowth of bright gold hair like a lion's mane, well, it made it somewhat hard to put on a full mask. He'd been told the brightly-colored cyclopean mask he'd chosen made him look like the Devil himself.

_Had the devil known what he would become when he made his stand against God? Did that make him brave? Did that make him a hero—or a villain?_

Regardless, Naruto was content.

Besides, his inner circle thought him some kind of fallen angel come to baptize the world in blood and fire and remake it according to his vision and they weren't far wrong, but they weren't totally right either. Naruto didn't bother to correct them as it was a delicate balance of fear and respect with most of the Band, with the possible exception of his innermost confidants; the people who knew the real plan—the real scope of Naruto's ambitions.

But fear proved useful sometimes.

In fact, as it was, nobody wanted to meet Naruto's gaze—and he couldn't blame them—though whether it was out of deference or fear he couldn't tell. The last time he'd checked in a mirror and evaluated the changes he'd undergone as a result of his decision—good or bad yet he couldn't decide—the purple ripple-pattern of his right eye, and the solid-white of his left, cowed even the most hardened criminal element in their band of freaks, outcasts, and tortured victims. If you added in his youthful features, the delicate fair-skin and long golden-blonde hair, they only contributed an element of innocence lost to his horned, demonic appearance. That wasn't counting the vibrant blood-red mask complete with a single, clear optic sensor that made him seem even less human.

He'd stolen the idea from his _dearest _uncle…may he rest in hell.

He found he couldn't care less—though that was true about a lot of things these days. Angel and Zero tried their best to snap him out of his black moods whenever they happened, but it was a futile effort most times. Anger kept him focused like a laser on his goals. The feeling was useful, especially when working his techniques.

Silent, cold evenings with only his memories for company were hard though.

He appreciated the thought nonetheless—not that he'd ever tell them that. The devilish commander dropped his gaze back to the mirror-bright blade that he was oiling in his lap. Naruto's hands moved automatically as he swiped the oiled rag back and forth along the five and a half foot long black saber. The thing was a hunk of metal; of repurposed ablative armor from a ship whose broken-off armor he'd happened to use as a makeshift weapon. After the fight, he'd been almost comatose and so out of it. He'd dragged the long awkward thing back to the ship with him. There, he'd taken it, honed both sides to an atom-thick edge, made it collapsible, and paired it with a jury-rigged non-slip grip. It paid to be safe after all. From then on, the massive foot-and-a-half-thick weapon was something he'd carried strapped to the small of his back ever since.

He'd cobbled most of their band's weapons, armor, and equipment from the battlefields they'd fought on—every one related to Cerberus in some way. He was like a fat parasite growing stronger by the hour as his enemy grew weaker, sucking the vitality out of them and _subsuming _his victim into himself.

They were vampires and devils taking the souls of their various conquests; a snake, swallowing their prey whole. Naruto shifted uncomfortably, conscious of the rippling sleeve of black lines on his upper-arm, a remnant of his sensei...someone he'd never thought he'd ever have much in common with. It was an uncomfortable thought, but he dismissed it in favor of the much more light-hearted thought that the man was dead. It meant the man never obtained the dream he sought with such fervor...ironically, Naruto had achieved it first-and in a way that his sensei had dismissed as a fairytale.

Naruto smirked with black humor. Zero, sitting on his left, all elaborately tattooed up , eyed his expression with one skeptical eyebrow. Naruto merely gave her a blank look and she shrugged, turning back to her ridiculously over-sized monstrosity of a shotgun. He was pretty sure that krogan-model she was handling like it weighed nothing was banned in a bunch of places. An automated voice blazing over the loudspeaker cut through the eerie stillness and snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Commander, your presence is requested on the bridge."

Naruto nodded to his inner circle seated around him at the conference table; his second-in-command of operations Angel, their heavy-hitter Beast, his electronic wizard Rat, and his walking-calamity Zero. They all watched him stand up, the cloak fluttering down to his feet. Silence.

Their commander pulled his mask up to his face from his belt where it dangled and spoke briefly into his comms, "I'll be right there."

Nobody spoke and he could feel the tension as he reattached his mask to his belt; they'd been working up to this point—this _place_—for almost three years. Hell, Naruto was almost an adult now. It was a strange thought—maybe he was getting _old_. It felt important—momentous.

At this stage, they could all but taste their first true victory.

Naruto ratcheted the blade horizontally against his lower spine and it collapsed into a manageable size. The horned blonde turned to leave, but paused. His subordinates had stood as one and kept their arms at their sides. Naruto considered them, looking at each one in turn; Beast, with his freakishly massive armored presence and comforting solidness; Rat with his twitchy, plucky countenance; Zero, his tattooed, tomboyish one-woman wrecking ball; and Angel, his right-hand woman and a stone-cold angel-faced assassin, one you never even saw coming. They were his new family.

Naruto continued walking after a beat, smiling at them. He left the conference room in silence and passed blood stains on the gangplank up to the elevator that connected the rooms to the bridge. He made a mental note to have someone clean all the filth up from their hostile takeover when they finished with this mission.

Silence stretched as the elevator ascended, passing three floors. A pleasant chime dinged out on his final destination; the Command Information Center. The blonde stepped out and passed through the next doorway, nodding to a few of his subordinates along the way who passed by him in the hall on various errands, and entered into the cramped bridge of the Cerberus vessel where their pilot skillfully maneuvered towards the eight-mile long exposed docking port jutting out from the towering orbital station.

The pilot—simply called Mute by most—was a scarred, mutilated girl of seventeen, dressed in her typical strange garb—something related to backwoods shamanism he'd heard. Fur from strange animals, prayer beads of every shape, size, and color hung off her lean, leather-clad frame. She had a mace with a big jewel on it propped up against a wall within arm's reach. Naruto didn't know what any of it meant—and he was as close to country bumpkin you could get. But it just so happened that he didn't care all that much about her past, only that he or she was (in an ironic twist) an ace with any ship they came across.

He cared about function only. In return for piloting their ships, they let her sacrifice a few prisoners. She seemed content.

Over time, the Band picked up a bit of the sign language she'd created for herself since Cerberus cut out her tongue (for some minor misdemeanor) in the hell they'd all escaped from together. The band let return the favor to those Cerb soldiers unlucky enough to be taken prisoner. She danced and chanted and sprinkled her herbs and incense while they begged for death under her tender care. Naruto had to admit she was an artist with a knife. The screams echoed a long way in an empty ship like theirs. He never knew how useful it was to have a pilot who doubled as a professional torturer.

Function, like he said.

Mute carefully got his attention by waving and grinning like the village idiot (in some ways she was). He got the message.

_All-clear. Signals launched. Still undetected. Green to go._

She scrambled their codes and enabled the protocols Rat, their resident cyber-genius, cooked up for them to bypass the numerous and extensive cyberwarfare defenses Cronos Station had in place to prevent exactly what they were trying to accomplish. Rat had assured them that his routines and protocols would allow them to enter like ghosts in the system.

Naruto had no trouble believing him.

The last Namikaze didn't really know anything about computers—other than what he'd picked up from watching Rat and the others—but he did know enough to realize Rat wasn't entirely…_human_…in the way that he interacted with electronic systems. There was something almost artificial about him. Naruto didn't think too hard about it, but he had to admit it was eerie and somewhat off-putting the way he simply went vacant and his eyes flashed with an electric glow as he manipulated things beyond what they could see. Whatever he could do—and whatever he was—Naruto was grateful. This upcoming operation would be impossible without the best of the best. And that was Rat.

Besides, Naruto could hardly speak about off-putting inhuman powers as he'd been told the tricks he used were downright terrifying. Teleportation, he'd been told, wasn't natural—nor was summoning lightning storms or swimming for hours underwater, or lightings things on fire with a snap of his fingers. It was minor shit to him—minus the teleportation bit—but he couldn't argue with the freaky-factor.

Frankly, with regards to his powers, he was only an infant still trying to learn to walk.

Scratch that, it was more like he had his spine broken, or had his brain bashed in and he had to relearn to write, to read, to do all the basic things he'd taken for granted. The best way to put it was…he was an ocean of power with a tiny spigot; the spigot was his ability to shape it. The spigot he'd used for his tiny powers before was now entirely different and you had to grip it _just _a certain way in order to turn it on. It took time to tap into what he had, but for now at least, he had a few parlor tricks and a few true magicks to fall back on; chakra techniques he'd reworked from his old life. Naruto had been taught by the best of the monsters in his old world and that tutelage would show, in time.

Who was he to judge then, what was inhuman? Given what he was planning to do to _everyone_?

The blonde snapped out of his thoughts as he readied the orders he wanted to give. The ship jolted before he could finish planning, signaling the beginning of a docking procedure. Time was of the essence then. He pressed the button on the orange, translucent command center in front of him and started barking orders to his ghosts and vampires and demons waiting below to wreak unholy vengeance on those who'd tortured them, abused them, spat on them, and crippled them all—tore them away from their families, their friends; the love they should have had—all in the name of science and evolution.

They'd put an end to it all, here and now. But it was a beginning too; the smiles pasted on all the young faces spoke volumes. This was only the beginning for them.

Naruto smiled, a demonic parody of true happiness; a bloodthirsty rictus. Those around him looked pleased to see it. Like sun coming out from behind the clouds.

All across the ship, young armored figures slapped thermal clips into assault rifles and shotguns, biotic amplifiers suddenly hummed and surged with electricity, and melee weapons were hefted.

Their ship, a ghost ship, was about to make its final stop.

Forever.

* * *

Cerberus, they'd painstakingly found out through a hundred different engagements, relied extensively on their mechanical soldiers for more than just fighting. There was some simple reasons for this over-reliance; humanity itself relied on fire support, flexibility, and speed against alien aggressors. They simply did not have the numbers of troops to engage in slug-matches with alien foes like the Krogan or the Turians—Earth's forces were all volunteer…and so were Cerberus'.

To make up for this drawback, humans—and by extension Cerberus—used sophisticated technological support in the form of VI's, drones, powerful artillery, advanced biotics, electronic warfare, and an emphasis on mobility, individual initiative, and legions upon legions of mechanized infantry to level the playing field.

Humanity was a sleeping giant as only three percent of its total population was part of the military. Cerberus had only a further fraction of that number to draw on. As it turns out, this lack of real manpower made Cronos station vulnerable to Rat's unique powers as the station was filled to the brim with thousands of human-sized LOKI mechs and behemoth YMIR mechs.

Naughty, _naughty. _Had they not learned anything?

Shortly, they would all be under Rat's direct control.

Rat made Naruto's job very, very easy.

The horned blonde teen's body _rippled_ like a pond disturbed by a stone and continued strolling through the dark-lit station, suddenly wearing the face of dearly-departed Cerberus agent Miranda Lawson. Even from beyond the grave she was assisting him on his journey. She'd 'offered' him the location herself, right from her bloody lips—though, to be fair, it had been hard to resist when his arm was stuck through her chest. She'd given him the truth he sought in the end, even though he had had to drag it from her very soul. His right eye gleamed purple in remembrance. He savored every second of that bitch's screams. Naruto had to drag himself out of his pleasant thoughts as Naruto's crew had let him off at Docking Bay 17, a long, long way from his ultimate destination at the top of the station.

In order to get the exact coordinates of the station, they'd had to savage their way through multiple firebases, outposts, and listening stations in order to gain the clearest picture anyone in the _entire universe_ had of the main base of Cerberus—and the spider lying in wait at the center of the web.

The Illusive Man was truly an elusive foe.

Miranda had given him a face, some coordinates, generic habits (smoked like a chimney, had sex with paid supermodels regularly, and had absurdly over-priced suits), and a general overview of his likely moves, but not much else. His real name, for instance, was something they still didn't know—and likely never would. But Naruto could live with that as he knew that his foe had no idea what was coming for him, the real reason they were knocking on his castle.

How could he?

Naruto and his crew were no-names, ghosts, only a nuisance to Cerberus. Their hit-and-run tactics hadn't been a true threat. On top of that, they were most certainly not targeting anything Alliance-related, nor had they ever harmed a hair on the head of any of the Council's precious soldiers.

No, he and his Band of Merry Assholes stuck to gutting other pirates in the lawless Terminus system and defended the area around Despoina, occasionally harrying Cerberus wherever and whenever they could.

It made them something of experts on these kinds of tactical insertions.

Naruto made himself pay attention to his route. His booted footsteps were silent in the deserted, maze-like corridors of the base. He frequently consulted the stolen and much-battered omni-tool on his left arm for directions at every intersection, seeking to ascend further into the unfinished station. From the intelligence they'd gathered, this base was one that was only half-completed—a work-in-progress. Cronos station was working on only a skeleton crew at the moment due to the sensitive nature of the facility—and automated nature of most of the labor.

Paranoid bastard.

But really, he couldn't complain because about the Illusive Man's paranoid behavior; this plan would not have been possible if this station had been filled to capacity with actual, live soldiers. Naruto stopped dead as he came to a service elevator highlighted and marked on his three-dimensional orange diagram. This was it. He took off his mask to better navigate without distractions, hooking it to his belt. Putting a hand on either edge of the door, he pried them apart with main strength, lean muscles flexing and body glowing slightly as potent golden chakra rushed through the tenketsu on his hands and wrists, empowering him with the strength of an Atlas.

With careful control, he only left _slight_ furrowed dents in the metal as he pried open the shaft without too much noise. Honestly, it wasn't like anybody would really hear him—though it paid to be cautious nonetheless as silence was a ninja's best friend.

Naruto stuck his head out and looked up and down the shaft. Elevator technology had apparently come far since he'd been a kid. The mass effect technology that was at the heart of everything in this world he'd been thrust into affected everything from weapons, to food processing, to the elevators. As such, the shaft he'd stuck his head into was streamlined and relatively empty of anything with which to grab—all the better to help shoot an elevator covered in a bounded field straight up at high speeds and no ill effects.

So with one foot placed one after the other, he slowly fed chakra to the tenketsu on the bottom of his feet—which was a little more difficult through his boots than through sandals. The whole process was definitely painstaking. But, as a medic, good control was paramount, but trying to control the raging torrents of intoxicating power dammed up behind his inner gates was like trying to surf an Asari dreadnaught through a mass relay while stuck on the outside.

Fucking nuts.

So he stuck to the small stuff. Eighteen stories were bypassed with these small, agonizing steps.

As Naruto passed each level, he heard gunfire and shouts through the doors. At one point, a round penetrated the door and almost took his ear off. It left a sizzling hole in the metal next to him. The adrenaline running through his veins was comforting after that. He redoubled his efforts and strode vertically up another twenty-five floors worth in half the time. His omni-tool beeped at every flight. A red-light lit up in the darkness and he looked down at his computer; the beep confirmed it—he reached his destination.

The only sound on this floor was his slow, deep breathing echoing around him in the darkness. Naruto felt restless energy coursing through his veins speed up in response to his excitement and eddies of power threatened to knock out his control over his foots bond to the wall. He forcibly calmed himself and restrained a grim smile from breaking out across his face.

So far, so good.

Naruto slowly pulled his body into an L-shape, grabbed the lip of the elevator entrance, and smoothly stood upright into a darkened lobby from the miles of shaft behind him. The room he had entered was clearly expensive and tasteful; he knew that because there was dark, rich-looking wood adorning every wall. He hadn't seen wood paneling yet on the couple of space-stations he'd been on, so Naruto assumed that meant the wood was hard to get, though he couldn't fathom why—every planet he'd been on had lush forests. Pragia, for instance, had a wrathful, almost sentient forestry that would've made the Mokuton-wielding First Hokage shit a brick.

He snorted at the mental image.

It was clear his team had hit the control center like they'd planned and the lights were either a deep, sinister red or out completely. His gaze roved about the eerie, dark room. It would've been hard for anyone else to see clearly in the dim-lighting, but his eyes were more than up for the challenge. Scanning the room, he noticed the odd mix of furniture and objects; most of which was either covered in plastic tarps—with scaffolding around some of it—or historical in nature

Large murals of battles, in what he assumed was Earth's past, graced the walls. Naruto bent to examine the subtitles; heroes like Achilles and Hector battled in the fields of a place called Troy. The Betrayal of Paris and the Ego of Agamemnon bracketed the battling titans. Naruto had no idea strong warriors like these had existed—Greece sounded like an amazing place.

Against his will, he stopped to admire the artwork.

Heroes all; though some were more obvious than others. Odysseus the clever, Hercules the strong, Prometheus the giving; some punished for what others would see as acts of great bravery. Naruto felt an odd kinship with some of these misunderstood heroes of yore. After a thousand years, who would be there to tell the real story about why you did what you did? People were free to point fingers and call you evil and what you did abominable; but perhaps someone like Prometheus was the reason humanity had been able to elevate themselves out of the muck and sludge?

You can't create _weapons_ without _fire_…

Naruto knew the victors wrote the storybooks and he vowed that he'd be the one writing when this was all said and done. With that vow in mind, the cloaked assassin kept moving forward, striding in the only direction he could go; forward, down another long hallway filled with works of art depicting what he assumed were military greats.

His destiny was ahead through the door he was approaching. Dim red lights flickered and cast his face in scarlet relief. His left eye flashed solid red while the purple circles in his right faded into a deeper color, circling and twisting. The long, flowing banner-cloak hung still against his back in the non-existent air. It all smelled stale and faintly of fresh paint.

Naruto's sensitive nose twitched.

Naruto slipped his mask on, letting the contoured and armored transpari-steel façade mold itself to his face, filtering out the smell. The VI system booted up as it synced with his armor and omni-tools. Blue flickering screens spread up and out across his vision as his VI overlaid information on to the reality around him and went transparent. Numbers danced across his vision as a communications link solidified, finally, with the rest of his crew. Static crackled in his ear as Angela's voice came through quietly in the earpieces. He could hear fading gunfire in the background. His armored hand gently tapped against his comms button.

"All-clear boss; the main control center is ours. Live reinforcements are rallying though, just like you said they would. Second phase of the plan commences in about two minutes and they are walking right into it, again, just like you said."

His smirk was concealed by his mask.

"Deploy the decoys. After that, I won't need more than five minutes. I'll let you know when it's done—I'll make the station-wide announcement then."

"Understood sir. Angel out."

Click. Radio silence.

Naruto pulled his hand down from his ear piece and reactivated his omni-tool on his left arm, hitting a glowing, haptic button. A square shield of translucent orange sprang up, covering his left arm in a three-foot shield of transparent kinetic protection. He came to a stop at the massive ornate door about twelve feet across and twenty feet tall.

Imposing was the first word that came to mind.

He knew immediately that it was far more reinforced than it looked. Cleverly-disguised, the door had wooden-looking blocks in six sections along the edges of the door panel. They were heavy-bolt locking mechanisms for a portal as strong as a bank vault. Naruto placed one hand, fingers splayed out, against the deceptively-fragile looking door and breathed deep, reaching hard inside himself. Pathways opened and, if one was to have taken a look inside him at that moment, one would have seen shining, molten yellow chakra snaking outwards through his pathways. Bright gold chakra bubbled up around him and twisted around his arm, seeping out and spreading against the door. Wind picked up from the still room and he started shaping, channeling.

Naruto knew what he wanted the chakra to do; he'd learned that much from experimenting on their floating hideout on Despoina. Endless stretches of ocean were excellent as a punching bag. He'd found, while hunting through the depths with a rebreather, intent and science took him further than handseals with this kind of power, at least, that's how the guardians of the deep taught him.

Will.

Visualization.

Intent.

Naruto summoned it all; picturing the anger he felt as his body was flayed open on a Cerberus operating table. The hatred poisoning his veins as his sensei pried open his veins and taught him the meaning of pain. The laughter and love he felt when his mom tucked him and his little brother in at night, smoothing his hair back and placing a kiss on his sweaty forehead. Sweaty from training with his father, tired from expending so much energy trying to heal a bunch of fish from near death; these were the scenes he most associated with his family.

Love and hatred focused like a mass-accelerator cannon as he visualized the technique. Channeling the elemental force of wind, he took those emotions and funneled the spiritual energy into a vacuum-ejection point that exploded like a mini-nova against the door and sucked the entire doorframe up in a twister of energy and power and wind. The whole multi-ton door was ripped off its hinges and, with a flick of his hand and deep concentration, the vacuum-sphere instantly accelerated forward like a rushing train. Eight tons of nuclear-hardened steel flew like a shuriken, shattering multiple work stations, crushing a beautiful, fully-stocked bar, and finally embedding itself in the dura-steel walls of the Illusive Man's office. The noise of breaking glass, ripped and twisted steel, and a grinding swath of absolute destruction was deafening in the open room.

The man himself—unruffled—was standing, cigarette cocked in his mouth and not a hair out of place, completely unconcerned by the absolute devastation, hefted a heavy pistol and pointed the barrel straight at Naruto's face. And before the would-be assassin could register the threat, the man fired.

Once, twice; two shots rang out. Judging by the sound, two armor-piercing whip cracks.

The first bullet ruined his right knee in a spray of golden blood, the place where his armor was thinnest, dropping him to one knee. The second bullet ricocheted off the kinetic shield he crossed in front of himself lightning-quick. Naruto grimaced and forced a smile on his face.

"Expecting me were you?"

The man had the gall to smile.

_Smile._

Dick.

"Something like that Naruto. You and I are a lot alike I think." Naruto snorted, straightening. "Did you honestly think, after the breakout at Asphodel, that I wouldn't realize you were behind the recent string of raids on my facilities?" Here, the blonde-haired assassin stayed silent, contemplative. "But I wonder…how did you get so much inside information? I run a very tight ship my boy."

The horned teen smiled at the man, "I ripped the information out of your dear Ms. Lawson. She was very willing…well, her corpse was at least—very chatty, probably because she had nothing left to lose, I suppose. Death does that to you."

Cigarette light flared as the man sucked in his nicotine, unconcerned about the events unfolding. He just looked thoughtful. "Her corpse you say? Fascinating. I told Miranda that you were a goldmine of untapped potential, I told her to be careful, I also distinctly recall telling heryou'd be trouble if we didn't handle you carefully…but what does she do? She tortures you and backs you into a corner." A puff on the cigarette. "Stupid cunt. I'm glad she's dead—you saved me the trouble. Too bad about her sister though."

Naruto simply raised an eyebrow. "Funny, I would have thought you'd be a tad peeved at me for offing her—no?"

A laugh interrupted him.

"Peeved? I wanted to _flay you alive_ for daring to undermine my operation at Asphodel—until I found out what she did to you. She wanted results and chose the wrong way to go about getting what she wanted. It didn't help you almost choked her to death with your bare hands. When your…apotheosis came about it was a total surprise—very welcome in my eyes, but Miranda became frightened and she did not consult with me. So she overreacted. That is why I was angry with her. I was always about subtlety—never about unnecessary cruelty and overt gestures."

_He didn't say he didn't condone it…just that he despised unnecessary things._ _Slippery bastard._

"Frankly, it doesn't matter—that isn't why I'm here." The man looked puzzled.

"Oh? Why not? I think it matters very much—and then why _are _you here? Naruto, you don't have to kill me to get what you want. Hell, I'll_ employ_ you. I can put matters behind me, you had a very good reason to want me killed. But I think you and I want the same thing, no? To drag our civilization forward and protect what's precious about humanity? Tell me I'm wrong."

Naruto was silent.

A minute passed before he spoke and when he did, he spoke slowly, picking up speed as he went.

"You and I want the same thing on the surface. That's true. But you are a coward who refuses to get his hands dirty. How can you justify the things you do when you aren't willing to do them yourself? How can you ask others around you to commit atrocities you aren't willing to carry out with your own hands? You are a spider, sitting in his web growing fat on the sins of others. You carry no torch forward and because of that, you cannot be the healer the universe needs. Cancers are spreading and pulling you out by the root is the first step to recovery." Here, he stepped forward and faced the Illusive Man, pointing a finger in judgment. "I, Naruto Namikaze, will perform the surgery with my own two hands. Not only because I dearly want to kill, but because I made a promise."

He stared at his opponent who simply watched him with a calculating gaze, so he continued.

"Believe it or not, I was the weakest person in my village once upon a time…the people I looked up to were titans of power, titans of strength. I could never measure up and I was expected to—but I was always four steps behind everyone else around me, including my enemies. Enemies that were lurking in the wings from day one. I never knew they were gunning for me until they cut everything I loved away from me. My brother, mother, and father…my uncle. My sensei. It didn't matter that I was smart and cunning. I simply wasn't powerful enough, fast enough, to stop all the bad things from happening."

"I have power now though. More than I can handle…and I've found that when you have power, you have a responsibility to those around you. To the world, to change it and leave it better than you found it. That,_ Mr. Illusive, is exactly what I plan to do."_

Naruto's gaze became laser-focused on his foe. _"And you are standing in the way of me remaking the world as I wish it to be!"_

The man didn't have time to open his mouth.

Naruto gritted his teeth, ignored the gold ichor painting the ground along with his blown-out knee, and focused. Calculations flashed through his head as his right eye flared red, a ten daggered-wheel whirling, he peeled back the quantum layers of possibility and accelerated himself. His vision tunneled. Colors, images, and sounds blurred around him as he literally bored a hole through reality. He pulled himself through the intervening space between the leader of Cerberus and himself and, with a thunderous crack, slammed into the son of a bitch that was responsible for so much horror.

A flickering blue shield around the Illusive Man bled most of the energy of his hit off, but a crack of a breaking spine echoed through the room. Satisfaction rolled off the blonde in waves as his opponent was sent sprawling on the ground, broken.

Naruto attempted to straighten, but could only make it half-way up. His right arm reached under to the small of his back and detached the compressed black saber. With a flick of his wrist, five-and-a-half feet of steel hyper-extended. The behemoth weapon sure did get the job done—especially when he micro-fabricated a monomolecular edge for the massive foot and a half wide monstrosity.

He used it to keep himself upright as he limped over to the asshole bleeding from multiple wounds and a cut scalp and paralyzed with a broken back. The man's upper-body was slowly rolling around, suit all askew, in obvious and extreme pain from the concussive hit and subsequent broken bones. The fucker should never have been able to get the drop on him in the first place, but the plan called for it.

Naruto could admit to himself that he had gone in cocky though. He truly had wanted to speak to the man before doing the deed and baiting him with a disabling wound was the only way to get him to spill his secrets without killing him first. The Illusive Man had been right about one thing, they were very alike; and that was exactly why he planned it this way. Hubris was ever something he was wary of…most of the time.

It was mission accomplished; a suicide mission for anyone else but his team. They knew what they were getting into and its success had depended almost entirely on the element of surprise, intimate knowledge of their enemy—intelligence that no else had—and the sheer talent of their electronics-guru. Add in their sheer biotic might and you had the worst match-up for the Illusive Man possible.

That wouldn't happen again—hell, there wouldn't be a next time after this but as a general rule.

If he wanted to conquer, he couldn't do it from the grave.

Naruto limped over, using the thick blade as a crutch. He stooped down and picked up the man's still lit cigarette and took a knee next to the leader of Cerberus. The blonde pressed the lit cigarette into the man's neck and held it there. This man, the boogeyman that haunted many of his crew, _screamed_. He thrashed around and attempted to scoot away using one hand. The horned assassin flickered one armored fist out and punched him right in the face which snapped his neck and head back, slamming his head into the ground, dazing him. The man coughed and sputtered and lay still.

The blonde had enjoyed the screams while they lasted.

It was time to get down to business.

The soul was a tricky thing, as he'd found out with Miranda; the truth they spoke even more so. Naruto had found out almost accidently that you couldn't select the truth a soul spoke to you when you forcibly asked it to reveal its secrets. You rode it like a wave—a powerful, crashing wave that swept over you and showed you everything like you lived it…which you actually did in a way. It was oftentimes painful and more often enlightening—but it was mostly sad.

You know how the story ends after all.

The street went both ways, however, and Naruto was so looking forward to this one. Will. Intent. Visualization. The process was going faster each time he used his powers. Naruto's right eye flashed from the red dagger-wheel to the purple ripples slowly as he pictured his intent; a white room with black blocks that moved and rotated. Splatters of blood adorned pure white walls. A monolithic monochromatic throne sat on a raised dais in the center of the complex. A horned king with the kanji for Yama sat and glared out; a huge figure, white on black, all thorns and claws, all the while pronouncing eternal judgment. The images all flashed by in an instant as he snapped back to the man lying prone on the ground.

His arm and sword slowly became encased in a blinding white substance and Naruto stabbed downwards with his sword. Fabric, skin, muscle, bone, and viscera parted easily as the wide blade punctured his chest cavity and became anchored in the steel floor below him. Naruto smiled as the human responsible for uncountable amounts of suffering—and his own indirectly—spat up blood and tried to take a huge breath. But he didn't get to finish because a ghostly violet version of himself separated from his body and sat up, staring Naruto in the eye with a dead expression. The body below started seizing in spurts before it froze and his mouth opened and started screaming.

Hoarse, choked screams like a man being crucified echoed in the empty room.

The blonde assassin imagined that the man bleeding out on the ground was replaying Naruto's own life—and that he found himself unable to cope with the sheer horror of what had been inflicted on Naruto. That might not have been far off the mark as veins were popping in the man's eyes, filling the cornea with blood. More veins popped out in his neck and forehead while his lips started to turn blue. Gasps emerged more frequently.

The ghost started to speak over the man's cries in a monotone counterpoint. The spirit poured out secrets and truths and plots within plots. It poured out his life story—the how and why of Cerberus. The man had witnessed his own fair share of horrors, Naruto would give him that. He'd seen the overwhelming might arrayed against humanity on Shanxi, he'd seen the prothean relics, the terrors waiting in the deepest, darkest parts of space, and rightly concluded that humanity could not survive against the coming darkness. Humanity needed a sword and a shield against said darkness; someone willing to fight fire with fire, someone willing to do what was necessary to safeguard the most important part of life—to keep the Will of Fire burning as bright as the light of civilization.

But in the end, the man wasn't strong enough to be what the universe needed. The man was weak.

He worked from the shadows by pulling strings—you could never do what needed to be done that way, not by itself. No, to be a sword, you needed to engage. To fight and bleed, to kill and maim—upfront and personal and leading the charge. One needed to be a symbol and be more than just a person. The Illusive Man had gotten that much right—about the necessity of symbols—but what did he do with his symbolic might?

He squandered it, choked his adversaries through proxies, and grew fat in the center of his web, drunk on power that was not his own. He alienated those who most needed direction. Naruto had been as a man in a desert, looking for water, burnt by the sun and in desperate need. That water was power; and he had that in spades now.

And as he listened to the ghost of the man he'd killed and a man he was slowly growing to understand and admire for his conviction, if nothing else, Naruto understood something he hadn't before; that he needed to be more than he was now, he needed to insinuate himself into the heart of the conflict that was about to erupt, and lead from the front. The douchebag pouring his secrets out in front of him had the right idea about humanity's direction, but Naruto was going to take it one step further with the help of his crew…and now the full might of Cerberus. No, not Cerberus anymore and—well, the full might when they finished their hostile takeover.

A change in leadership was long overdue.

Naruto stood and his hands glowed golden-green as he repaired his ruined knee with his overpowered healing palm. Old habits die hard as his long-ingrained healer's reflexes took over, diagnosing and treating his own wounds. It wasn't bad thankfully. His shield deactivated and he compressed his saber back into a manageable size. An explosive sigh escaped him and Naruto let the bubbly golden chakra-sheath around him die.

One finger tapped the comms button on the side of his mask. "Angel, Zero; it's done. I'll make the announcement. You have taken care of every living person that can squeal on us?"

Joy bled through his subordinate's voice as she quickly passed the message on, he heard shouting and single gunshots ringing out, one by one. "Roger that sir, it is being taken care of as we speak. Hope the bastard squealed like a stuck pig, Sir."

"You know me; have I ever been accused of disappointing a lady?" He heard the silvery laugh loud and clear from the other end.

Naruto let off a quiet smile and cut communications, turning his mind to the bigger picture.

Any good doctor knew you needed to go to the root of a problem in order to cure it. As far as he could see, they had just performed a crucial first step; a complex surgery designed to tear out the cancer spreading across the body of humanity. Of course, a little healthy skin came with it…but that was to be expected. Cerberus, as it had been—a tumor that was dividing them all when they should be standing together—was no more, or close to it. Those divisions must be repaired at all costs. It was time to turn his attentions to the next stage, the main part of the plan.

The Systems Alliance was riddled with corrupt individuals vying for something other than the good of their people. He knew this because he now knew most of what the Illusive Man did. Simply put; the Alliance needed direction and he aimed to provide exactly that…but how to steer them in the direction he wanted?

It was a problem he'd already thought through and the answer was simple; they needed a symbol to unite them…and to lead. He didn't want to call it a hostile takeover, which was such a negative word, more…a gentle hand on the steering wheel.

How to get there though—? How could he become a symbol, a leader in the Alliance, like the plan required?

A face and a name swam to the forefront of his mind from his snippets of slowly-fading memories courtesy of Jack Harper; that of a beautiful, scarred red-head with a fierce sense of justice and an Alliance marine that was slated to become the first human Spectre in history.

Her face tugged at something inside him, something uncomfortable, and he ignored it as best he could.

Naruto Namikaze stood amongst the wreckage and smiled despite himself, _this might be my ticket._

Anna Shepard.

* * *

The Illusive Man, born Jack Harper, died in agony in the very heart of his power on July 4th, in the year 2175 of the Common Era.

From that day forward, the world churned on and no one—not even the nigh-mythical Shadow Broker—knew the full truth. Cerberus ceased to exist and **Phoenix** took its place. Firebases Alpha through Zeta came under new management, Minuteman was repurposed, and orders were handed down swiftly through the normal stealthy channels—none knew that the ultimate figurehead, and the man behind the curtain, had been replaced. Sure, there were strange mutterings of a change in management, but the changes were good ones as far as the employees were concerned…almost nothing changed. Except one crucial thing; high-ranking officials typically visited with their Leader via hologram…and that's exactly what he did.

He'd had to execute a few who couldn't accept the reality; but funnily enough, when they first set eyes on him, most believed he was the antichrist of the old Christian religious texts. Naruto, after browsing much of Earth's history in his spare time, found it ironic that the zealous neo-Christian Xenophobes who infested the previous organization's ranks were the most willing to bow to the Devil when converted.

A fanged, curved smile appeared on his face whenever he thought of it.

In other areas he was getting up to speed with, Naruto had almost zero complaints—especially the more overt changes he was making; like procedures for experimental technology. Beyond that, really, what were colors and symbols when the mission stayed the same? They were rising from the ashes of an internal war no one knew was being waged; rising better than ever. Genetically-superior experimental subjects, straight from the horror-fest over on Pragia's Asphodel facility, were taking on the most influential human organization in the cosmos and streamlining it to suit their own purposes.

Naturally, things ran smoother than ever before.

Sleeper cells were activated, favors called in, organizations formed, laws were rammed through Alliance parliament by puppet-members—all in order to create a place where those who were, 'different' were allowed to live and train in peace.

Directly from that effort came the commissioning of Jon Grissom Academy. Funds were rerouted to support the effort. It grew and grew; the Alliance parliament footing the bill for partial control of the newly minted, "Ascension Program," something Naruto thought was a bit of a joke as his people were in so deep nothing, not even new legislation and Alliance oversight, could dislodge them.

Ships were built in the new style with new colors, weapons manufactured, alliances were forged amongst Terminus rebels, mercenary groups subsumed into their amoeba-like mass—and the Alliance knew nothing of what grew under their noses, under the Devil's careful watch.

Yet Humanity grew stronger, day by day, and six months passed, unaware. Naruto Namikaze, the elusive leader of the paramilitary organization Phoenix, readied, waited, and prepared. Prepared for the day the eldritch horrors from deep space would arrive, just as his aquatic allies on Despoina had foretold.

He felt their truth in his bones, felt their presence resonate with the power inside him that flowed through his chakra system and swirled behind the inner gates locked inside his body. He was of the Shinju, they felt it, knew it, and welcomed him like ancient kin despite their differences. At the heart of it, they sought to balance the cycle of hatred between synthetics and organics, something Naruto knew almost nothing about.

Frankly, he was struggling just to quell the hatred among one race, let along them all.

Naruto had a hunch that the answer to the two biggest riddles; the two Cycles, lay inside him. The first problem; that of organics and synthetics, was something he knew he could solve—the only question was, how to enact his plan? The second riddle, the Uchiha/Senju cycle of hatred, ran far, far deeper—but the answer, he thought, lay with humans.

But more than that lay the machinations of ancient entities that had grown fat with power—he had to do something about all of them.

The Shinju, the Calamity from Below, was a protector of the deep planetary consciousness; the Leviathans, his allies on Despoina, were ancient aquatic beings not content to anchor themselves in one place. They had to move about space as through water.

A Leviathan's abilities manifested and grew through benevolent rule over thrall species, while the Shinju absorbed dark energy into its nigh-divine self like a Dyson sphere. The both of them were at the apex of evolution and so Naruto, in their eyes, had Avatar-status for his connection to the Shinju—and that meant big-time protection. After all, there weren't too many apex predator races left in the cosmos…

…and speaking of predators, the Leviathans from the Deep spoke of another race of being, the Reapers, who would be directed by a Harbinger. The synthetic consciousness, Reapers, escaped their control and plagued them to this day. Eldritch bioships, horrors in deep space, were waiting for the next cycle to begin.

The dark thought of them kept him awake at night sometimes.

An avatar, the Harbinger, would appear to usher in the newest Reaping. There had to be a leader strong enough to unite everyone to meet and oppose the unstoppable juggernauts waiting to crush almost all life in the universe.

That leader was Naruto and he needed to be ready, needed to be at the right place, and at the right time—for missing the Harbinger of Destruction meant being two steps _behind_ in the race for conquest. And those two steps meant doom for everyone; and he couldn't let that happen.

It would be Konoha all over again—and he wouldn't have his uncle helping him escape destruction a second time. Naruto refused to fail. If he expected to win, than his next stop was Council space.

The Citadel.

* * *

**A/N: Hope you all enjoyed the first chapter of a wild ride. Canon will be immediately thrown out the window upon reaching the beginning of the first Mass Effect. BE WARNED. These ripples reach further than you can ever imagine. **

**A note on Shepard: she is female, paragon, and you can just imagine how a Paragon female Shepard will react to a very, very Renegade Naruto. He is a medical ninja by trade, has been trained by...someone...dark, and has tasted something that has altered him irretrievably. Will sparks or fists fly between the two? **

**No worries, although this has a plot centered on romance for only important reasons, it won't make you gag, nor will it be hard to swallow. This is dark realism and I intend to accomplish what I set out to by making you sit on the edge of your seat wondering; "What the fuck will happen?" I'm trying to channel George R.R. a bit...without the awful writer's block and constant death. Leave me a review and let me know how I'm doing.**

**I'll address the inevitable issues of, 'how powerful is Naruto?' **

**Right now? Very powerful. **

**Was he always this way? Hell no. **

**How skilled is he with his powers? Not very. **

**Will he get better? Of course. **

**This is the Reaper invasion how I would have invaded, had I been ordering the fleets around. Brutal. To the point. Naruto will have to be sharp to outmaneuver and outwit a millions-of-years old Harbinger. He'll also need to be hellaciously powerful, which he is, but what good is being powerful if you cannot use it to its fullest? That is only a part of his journey. **

**Q: Where the fuck is Kurama? You'll find out, just shut your mouth and read. (PS. he's not inside Naruto)**

**I need to say this; EVERY SINGLE THING I DO HAS A FUCKING REASON. It's not cosmetic, there is a reason behind every cosmetic change I make to Naruto. I'm trying to achieve a look and feel without outright _telling_. That's what good writers attempt to do, they show you and don't tell you. Draw conclusions about things based on how I'm writing the details. **

**Finally, review for gods sake. The percentage of people who review are less than 1% and that is shameful. Leave a review, even if it's to say you liked it or hated it. I have to say, reviews make me update faster-the more I get, the more motivated I am to write the next one. I'm super distracted with a lot of things in my life and reviews keep me focused on churning out the product. I'd like to reach a hundred reviews if I can, but who knows? **

**Anyway, R&R and hope you enjoyed.**

**Cheers,**

**Arte**


	2. Chapter 2: A Prologue to Convergence

A/N: And here we are again, per my new updating schedule; bi-weekly. It seems like people enjoyed the last chapter...I'd like to see a few more reviews. It's hard to judge whether it was a success if I only have a few ardent supporters! Even if you hated it, do me a favor and drop me a line. It HELPS like you would not believe.

So, on to it then. This chapter starts wayyy before the first one. We see some foreshadowing, a preview of things to come and a preview of things that have passed. I'm curious as to what you make of it.

Enjoy.

Cheers,

Arte

PS. Titanfall/Mass Effect cross-over anyone?

* * *

**Chapter 2: A Prologue to Convergence**

"Without madness what is man  
but a wholesome beast,  
Postponed corpse that begets?"  
― Fernando Pessoa, _Poems of Fernando Pessoa_

_**CE 2172, Milky Way, Perseus Veil, Unknown Planet, Ruins of Konohagakure**_

**THE GODTREE**

The Shinju had become aware again and the ancients of the universe, the apex of the evolutionary struggle,_ knew_.

Finally moving once again, the hidden Leviathans stirred on Despoina as their wayward children, the waiting synthetic calamities from the darkness of space, woke as well.

Elsewhere, the last of a dying race, the last of the _true _Protheans, shuddered in stasis. The warrior known as Javik slowly - slowly - woke, agonizing inch by agonizing inch, from his dreams, dreams plagued with nightmares of ancient enemies.

A thousand years had passed since the primordial entity, the Shinju-kan, had last detected the muted, but ultimately miniscule-remnants of its power. The divine being had laid waste to the continent in search of the last vestiges of itself ages ago and apparently had missed a fragment.

After that galactic cycle, it had quieted-gone dormant. Most would have viewed the complete destruction of all sentient life on a planet as abhorrent, or even evil, but to the Shinju it was merely trying to become whole once more. If that meant killing everything and everyone who bared a scrap of its power—then so be it. The imperative was burned into itself, instinctual, to regain the bits of its divine spiritual essence as well as the vast stores of collected physical energy—the dark engine of creation—that it had amassed over the millions of years of its life.

It was sentient above a level that humans or even ninja could understand, uncaring of those things that mortals treasured; life, for instance. For what meaning does a hundred, even two hundred years, have for something that measures lifespan in the millions—billions?

What it did understand was that it had lost something—and gathered most of it again.

But not all, not all…

It remembered countless millennium ago when the horned demon-witch's people had developed ever more elaborate technology and weapons with which to kill each other, in a time when He remembered being the consciousness of the planet, floating in the dark of space. A time just before the atoms split and the landscape changed—his surface became pitted with scars. Mass engines of war—utilizing nothing but the power of science—moved and worked and killed and parts of him died. That is, until the Princess of the reigning kingdom sought the thousand-year fruit of ultimate power from the dormant Shinju in the very heart of his being; the Mirror-pool of Lirial, upon which Yggdrasil bore one fruit.

Sheer arrogance had moved the horned demon-witch, Princess Kaguya Otsutsuki, to eat of the fruit and take from Him a portion of His power. All the better to single-handedly subdue the entire world and attempt to forcibly cease her peoples fruitless warring and suffering.

With the power of chakra, the subjugation and the cessation of war became easy. And peace reigned.

But it was short-lived.

Gentle spirit no more, He awoke with a titanic roar in his new Form causing a ring of volcanoes to explode and several mile-high, miles-long tidal waves of unheard proportions to wipe out the southern coast of the country later known as Kumogakure as he uprooted himself. Seismic shocks echoed and with them a wave, a wave that broke a mountain in half. Millions died on the mainlands and it wasn't until the sons of the Princess sealed the newly-unleashed beast into themselves that a type of quiescence became possible.

After that, the Shinju had been split into nine parts and hundreds of years passed.

For a small period of time, in the galactic vastness, relative peace had reigned as historical figures came and went. The warring clan's era was like children playing at war compared to the days long passed and it wasn't until one figure stood out among all the rest, years after its birth, that things began to change. The descendant of its second most hated enemy, one Madara Uchiha, not that it even knew the meat sacks name, unlocked the hated eyes that had proven a match for His might, for it was of Him. But, the Rinnegan was not enough this time in an inferior blend of the Sage's DNA, for Uchiha Madara was no Hagoromo Otsutsuki. The Shinju ignored the petty plans of mortals, the coils they spun out of gossamer thread they believed to be steel, and It broke free with merely an exertion of will, of flexing of divine muscle. The petty things around him battled and battled as the Shinju became more and more aware, even inside the weak flesh of the mortals that claimed to bind Him.

Until He broke free and crashed upon the mortality around him like the ground rushes up to meet fine china mishandled by a child and a great many people died in that moment. Still a drop in the bucket compared to eons past.

Years flew and after His awareness of the quantum components of its power faded from His awareness (and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands died—absorbed—back into His essence) as the Shinju slept for a thousand more years.

Until one day, a day like any other, the Shinju awoke in panicked confusion. A rend in space-time appeared at his base. A mortal soul, an insignificant speck—muted though, as if once behind a curtain of sorts—had penetrated his deepest sanctum and dared pluck from the lowest hanging branches of Him…

… the last remaining ninja, and a very unimpressive one at that, had taken the thousand-year fruit.

The fruit was unripe, but it made no matter as to the potency. It was of Him. Its roots burrowed deep and triggered seismic activity the likes of which hadn't been seen since the formation of the planet as it raised itself up, morphing and changing. Strange energy signals around His body flitted and darted, faster than anything he'd seen since Otsutsuki's time of science and machines.

Questing tentacle-like branches the size of mountains slowly waved and undulated as a single, dread eye opened in the center mass of the tree. Awake and aware and furious, it sought the last piece of itself—and the last drop of witchblood.

_**CE 2172, Milky Way, Horsehead Nebula, Anadius: Cronos Station**_

**THE ILLUSIVE MAN**

Jack Harper was a name he never answered to and only a few people alive even knew it—or knew enough to connect the dots to the truth. Instead, he much preferred the title, the symbol, born of a seemingly innocuous email that the Alliance had said came from, 'an illusive man,' during the events on Shanxi.

Yes, that fit much better.

Humanity needed to take its place at the head of the galactic community—he'd seen that clear as day when he ran around in his heyday on Shanxi; he'd had one of the first sights of the first alien species to interact with humanity, those damn_ turians_. He'd also seen first-hand the overwhelming might arrayed against humanity and realized that to be just 'merely' human was not going to cut it. They needed to rise above and _conquer_.

By any means necessary.

So, when the leader of Cerberus was reborn in the days following as the Illusive Man, and not just 'Jack Harper,' he'd bent his vast wealth and fortunes, his considerable intellect, and the legion of people at his disposal, all towards the elevation of humanity. Gene therapy, genetic engineering, and experiment after experiment on human test subjects—nothing was forbidden.

In fact, when biotics were discovered—and they found the plethora of powers the aliens in the dark of space expertly commanded—he'd blown up an entire ship full of element zero—typically cancer-causing in humans—above an extremely populated city on Earth. The spread of the carcinogen was necessary in the hopes that humanity would develop more biotic powers as a side-effect. Scores of adults and children died in horrible, screaming agony, but a couple years later they had their first confirmed humans with biotic potential.

Like he'd said; nothing was forbidden.

He sought out every technology possible and mastered it—all in an effort to prepare humanity for the dark times he was sure were ahead of them. It really was too bad humanity's main defenders, the Systems Alliance, were so short-sighted. They could've done great things together.

As a result, he'd decided that if the Alliance couldn't work together with Cerberus...then there was only room for one of them. It was to be nothing less than a silent, hostile takeover, and total-war declared. His _Terra Firma_ party on Earth worked to insinuate a pro-Human agenda while his agents worked their way through the Alliance in an effort to put forth the agenda the leader of Cerberus wanted.

Sure, sometimes it got messy; assassination was _so _crude, but he did whatever he had to for the greater good. And a hundred years from now, humanity would look at him as a savior—someone who did the unthinkable to ensure everyone's survival.

They'd _thank_ him.

In fact, he had a call coming through from just such a one; Virginia-born dissident Michael Lang believed wholeheartedly in what Cerberus was doing. The political malcontent had formed something of a revolution and needed weapons which the Illusive Man thought was a fine investment, provided they work as hard for him as he was working for them. Those musings were interrupted by a little voice chiming from his transpara-steel workstation in front of his chair.

"_Sir, priority call from CSV Armado from the Triangle, near the Perseus Veil. They say they've just gotten a strange energy surge—possibly Geth—from a nearby planet, previously unmapped, and would like to investigate." _

His secretary had orders not to disturb him. It had to be important.

The Illusive Man leaned further back in his throne-like chair, retrieved a cigarette, and lit it. With his Niacin fix sated, he activated a button on the side panel of the arm of his chair. An orange screen brought up the first officer on the Armado, a science vessel he'd originally sent to investigate the Geth and the Quarian home fleet—and truth be told he'd never expected them to report on anything worthwhile.

The bridge of the ship, and diligently working Cerberus crew, were clearly visible over the officer's shoulder as Petrovsky spoke with suppressed excitement, "Sir, we've found very little traces of the Geth near the Triangle, but we ended up a little further out into the sector then we had intended in order to avoid detection. However, what we've found more than makes up for that, sir." The leader of Cerberus interrupted him coolly, "I'll be the judge of that commander, thank you. Please continue." Petrovsky swallowed hard and did as his superior commanded, "My men picked up an outrageous amount of energy pouring off a planet we've never visited sir, it wasn't in the star logs either. It was strong—on par with a sun. It scrambled most of the sensors for almost an hour. I've never seen anything like it…and…" Here, the veteran Cerberus commander seemed to hesitate. Cerberus' leader leaned forward, brows drawing into a deep V, "Spit it out commander."

"It moved around sir, on the surface."

The man once called Jack Harper knew that almost no ships had ever come out this far for fear of the Geth. Rightly so. It _would_ be the perfect place for new Prothean technology to be discovered. They'd had similar luck in the lawless Terminus system, finding beacon after beacon. And as always, any discovery was worth the price if it advanced Cerberus' cause.

But a moving, incredibly powerful energy source on a previously unknown planet in the middle of one of the most dangerous regions of space—barring the Omega-3 Relay? The Illusive Man felt his pulse quicken and blood race in his veins. Risk could bring great reward and Cerberus never backed down from any amount of risk.

The cause was all.

Jack Harper leaned forward and stabbed forward with two fingers clenched around a lit cigarette, "Commander, I want you to investigate both signals and perform as thorough a search as you can with what you have. It'll have to do for now. I'll put two cruisers en route. I assure you there will be a reward for the crew if you are to discover something worthwhile. _Keep me informed._" Petrovsky nodded. "Sir, Armado out."

Today was really turning out to be a day of wonderful opportunities.

The Illusive Man turned back to the assassin he'd charged with killing President Enrique Aguilar of the United North American States. He'd just connected via hologram. A dry smile graced the leader of Cerberus' face.

"I apologize, Mr. Lang, I had some matter of importance crop up. As to the matter at hand, I assure you I sympathize entirely with your feelings on the matter." The man nodded. "And I happen to agree on your second point; the President of the United North American States does need to be removed…"

The man smiled beatifically as the Illusive Man continued talking.

The Illusive Man smiled inwardly. _Gotcha_.

Today was a great day.

_**CE 2172, Milky Way, Perseus Veil, Unknown Planet containing the ruins of the Elemental Nations**_

**ALLIANCE VESSEL: SSV CONSTELLATION**

The SSV Constellation, assigned to the 63rd Scout Flotilla, was on patrol near the Hades Nexus when it picked up the same signal that the CSV Armado had. The long-range scanners had indicated a burst of energy similar in strength to a solar flare from a sun the size of Betelgeuse.

Of course, that was impossible as the planet would have been far less hospitable once the flare finished eliminating the atmosphere and killing all life on the planet. The flare was that of an almost biotic wave of energy, a massive electromagnetic pulse, sweeping up and out into the sky like a snake about to strike. The wave scrambled their sensors and flooded them with strange readings.

That energy that damaged their sensitive and powerful sensors was not altogether normal and if it happened at any other point would have wiped out a portion of their radiation shielding, which made it a little suspicious. Even more so when they saw the tell-tale black, yellow, and white of another ship investigating the same readings they were; the paramilitary organization blacklisted by the Alliance, _Cerberus_.

This just tripled in importance.

Rear Admiral Mikhailovich had given them permission to investigate—so long as they kept up constant FTL quantum contact in the case of emergency. He didn't seem too concerned. But it _was_ within the parameters of the mission of the Scout Flotilla—regardless of the fact that the Perseus Veil was not a place to venture lightly without a heavily-armed escort.

Or really ever, at all.

This sector was always the worst and most sailors called this the space equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Even the Geth had avoided it like the plague—a strange occurrence indeed. But the Commander ignored his misgivings and ordered the team of pilots to pull them closer anyway.

Engaged with the newest of the stealth suites, the ship was just close enough—and invisible enough—to have spotted a Cerberus science vessel entering the atmosphere.

That got the brass' attention alright.

A flurry of emails generated in the CIC and interest was piqued; the Naval Special Warfare Department had sent them out here on a top-secret classified technology retrieval mission—much like their Cerberus counterparts, unbeknownst to them—and they'd had to fight pirates, scattered pockets of Rachni bio-ships, Krogan gunships bristling with weaponry, and a whole host of other crazies in their prothean hunt. He would never let this opportunity escape him while he had the chance, especially given what they were excavating on Mars in the recently discovered ruins—but that stuff was almost above his pay grade entirely.

The fact remained that whoever held the most pieces of technology from the Races that Came Before, held a significant strategic military advantage over everyone else. Frankly, it was the reason the Asari were the pinnacle of civilization and why the Turians had such an incredibly military advantage over everyone else; reverse-engineered Prothean technology.

It was vital to Humanity's interests.

Reinvigorated with academic and professional curiosity, he barked orders to his crew.

**Commander Petrovsky**

Commander Petrovsky of the Cerberus Science Vessel Armado manipulated the long-range optics in his CIC himself, wanting a lay of the land in his head before sending his men down, and he had to admit he had never seen a planet look more like Sol-system Earth than this one-and he'd been to Eden Prime _and_ Elysium.

It was uncanny.

Yet, the odd moon orbiting the planet _alone_ was giving him the willies. Add in the massive battle scars on the planet and the clearly man-made ruins reminiscent of Edo-period Japan and you had one jumpy commander. But what made him most nervous was the gargantuan tree big enough to block the sun and actively jamming their signals. It covered everything in shadows, he noted, while he switched optics to watch the live feeds on the soldier's helmet-cams as they trekked through sparse jungle, making their way from the infiltration point by two statues of obviously human men, to the entrance of the ruins of a primitive-looking city.

It was obvious as they entered that a battle of epic proportions had been fought here a very long time ago and, judging by the sheer electromagnetic interference (as well as some other ghost signals reminiscent of when biotics saturated an electronics-heavy area), it had been messy. It seemed to him that strange types of energy weapons had been used to score the buildings and the streets.

Could it be Prothean in origin?

"Sir…"

_Finally, news! _

_Wonderful._

Petrovsky grinned.

He had been hoping to find another Prothean data cache—or artifact for that matter—to worm his way back into the Illusive Man's good graces. He'd paid well, _very_ well for technology from the ancients.

For good reason.

He seemed obsessed, but then, it benefited humanity immensely-so what was the harm? But as he continued to watch the feed, the minor interference from before spiked and their ships' sensors overloaded and shutdown. Black screens greeted the communications officer and his commander as staff leapt into overdrive attempting to regain the feed.

Seconds later it came back, and they'd never seen anything quite like what was in front of them in their life and Petrovsky prayed to a god he didn't believe in that he never saw anything like it again. The helmet feed showed massive roots as big around as a corsair—roots attached to a slowly _walking_ tree-trunk as big and as tall as a dreadnought-class starship turned on its head-swung and undulated through the air as if searching. An anguished guttural roar echoed through the ship as the sheer volume bled through, giving everyone the scare of their lives. An energy bled off the roots that played havoc with the sensors and made heat-sensing terribly difficult. Luckily, they had locked on the two life-signs before entering the atmosphere and he'd sent a Kodiak and a troop of his best to retrieve whatever was sending the signals as soon as they'd sighted the deserted, carved-out valley.

The question was whether they'd survive.

Regardless of how beneficial this discovery might prove, for those just discovering them; glowing, moving, seemingly _hostile_ things were usually avoided.

Especially something that big.

It was better they do this by the book.

"Inform Sergeant Daylum to follow protocol on this _to the letter_ or he'll be a god damn potato-peeler for the rest of his life-or _dead_ which will be better for him than answering to me. Assuming he lives through his disobedience." He cut off the communique, and muttered the last part, "The last thing we need is another incident."

"Sorry sir, I didn't catch that."

"Nothing, don't worry about it Private. Carry on."

"Sir."

The sixty-year-old Cerberus commander knuckled his back as he straightened from the monitor and smiled wearily at his comms officer. "Keep me posted on the extraction process." The communications officer swallowed hard and nodded, returning to his comm.

_Maybe Patricia will finally get off my back if I earn this promotion—_

"Sir, Sergeant Daylum reports there's a short figure, humanoid, running towards their position. Move to intercept, sir?"

A bad feeling smothered his good mood and Petrovsky's smile faded.

**Namikaze Naruto**

Naruto woke up on his hands and knees, congealed blood and some other unidentified white substance pooling from his right eye, sluicing down his smooth, pale cheeks in rivulets to form a black and red muddy puddle a foot from his face.

It was far from the worst thing he'd woken up to recently.

His fingers clenched in the cool brown soil; it smelled so fresh and new. The smell of fresh earth made acid surge up his throat and burn as he expelled everything he'd eaten in the last…well, who knows how long?

He couldn't remember what happened or where he'd been—a memory flashed by of a black void filled with white blocks, a bloody kunai and red, desperate love-filled eyes trying to protect him by hurting him.

A death and more blood.

His mind shied away from it and it was gone.

His right eye throbbed like someone had driven a dagger into it.

So Naruto sat and tried not to think as his head pounded, pounded like someone set up massive war drums to play a steady beat just for him. His long, blood-matted hair—the original color and not the gunk-filled mess it was now, was of the most golden sun-color one could imagine, or so he'd been told. The long, unbound hair dragged and rested in his vomit and blood as he tried desperately to rest his feverishly hot cheeks and forehead on the cool, fresh earth. The swaying of leaves and slanting sunlight through the branches above him lulled him to an exhausted half-sleep. The exhaustion weighed him down like an anchor and it was hard to think through a haze.

But he did anyway because that is what he'd been taught.

_Your mind is the only thing you have, a shinobi's greatest tool and the key to true power_, sensei had said. _You don't have the luxury to be exhausted Naruto-kun..._

**_Sensei_.**

His mind seized on the word and memories associated with it while emotions, too fast for him to process, flashed by. He got the gist of it all though. It was pain, betrayal and—

His mind shut down again and he desperately thought of something else to occupy himself while he struggled not to be sick again. He took stock of himself and counted to twenty-five, judging each breath and losing himself in the rhythm as he'd been taught. 20. Breathe. 21. Evaluate. 22. Analyze. 23. 24.

_Act._

And as he reached the final number, his sky-blue eyes opened and he sat up, hair lifting out of the muck he'd made with his blood and bile. The hair drooped limply down his back as he stared at a brown wall a dozen paces from him. He'd thought it a brown wall on first inspection—until he made out the striations and whorls of wood, scarred and pitted. The tree stretched out to his right and left as far as he could see from his position kneeling on the hard-packed earth. It was a tree in the sense that a hurricane was wind. Naruto moved; on his feet and at the tree without realizing it, as if compelled. He rubbed his hand against the bumpy wood and felt the strength pulsing in it.

Unnatural warmth radiated through his hand and he withdrew it quickly. _This is no tree…it feels aware._ He could sense it, sense the immense chakra like a person in the sunlight could sense the blazing orb overhead by the warmth on their face. Warm, quiet, unremarked, absolutely gargantuan beyond understanding, but present nonetheless.

He kept one hand on the tree as he walked. Simple scientific curiosity guided him or so he told himself. The short twelve-year old thought of himself as a man of science—a healer—

-_No, but not quite true anymore is it, a murderer now aren't we Naruto-kun_? _Fu-fu-fu_—_Naruto, it is easier to destroy than create_-

His hand left the bark and he stumbled, thrown by the ragged thoughts—were those his? What—

He tried to ignore it.

An opening in the otherwise unremarkable bole of the colossal tree caught his attention as golden light spilled out around the edges, the sound of a trickling brook reaching his ears. Leaves crackled as he moved forward to the edge of the opening, peering around and spotting a massive, round room of sorts; a hidden sanctum almost. It seemed carved for a purpose, circular in dimension and framing the centerpiece; a mirror-bright pool with an upwelling of water, fountaining in the center of the nook. Golden light played on all surfaces of the room and it took Naruto only seconds to spot what the light came from.

The far, blank wall of wood—unnatural really—had multiple gnarled, but strong branches, like fingers, extending out over the center of the fountain and pool and met in a design like the spokes of a wheel. From the center dangled the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

It was a peach, or an apple, or a _guava_ native to Taki, or _some _sort of fruit that emitted a soft golden glow. But gold was not the only color. The innards of the fruit had a riot of colors dipping and swirling and competing in a plethora of shades he didn't know existed. He never remembered being able to draw or paint with that many colors as a child.

Faint whispering crept up on him, just on the edge of his ability to understand the words—if words were what they were. The whispering chorus spoke with one voice and sounded angry, consonants so sharp they could have drawn blood. The voices didn't want him here and didn't want him to have the prize dangling in front of his face.

He had to have it.

He was starving and it looked so good, so pure, and so _fresh_. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten…days? Months? A year? Was it possible for it to have been as long as that? A flash of darkness, contracting and expanding like lungs, hit him and was gone before he could process anything more. He knew it was where he'd been all this time, but for _how long_?

Naruto shook his head, hair sticking to his forehead in a smear of blood and dirt. He moved and stood at the edge of the pool, staring at his prize, his arm moving of its own accord. He reached up and up. The whispering grew louder, a susurrus of voices; some angry, some sad, others warning, others panicking.

Naruto ignored them and continued reaching.

The chorus only grew louder until finally, as his hand closed around the fruit, the voices ceased and a rumbling began right underneath his feet.

Naruto stumbled and pitched to the side, thankfully missing the pool, and smacked his head against the wall. Stars burst behind his eyelids and he collapsed, instantly nauseous again. Bile came up and he choked it back, stomach heaving in pain as nothing was there to expel. Blackness narrowed his vision to a pinhole as he struggled with his burden, the golden fruit clutched in his dirty, bloody hands.

Naruto half-crawled, half stumbled towards the entrance as the seismic activity continued, the ground bucking him like a horse. He made it out, miraculously standing (kind of) and his vision started to clear as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and it was there he almost died as the ground almost opened up beneath his feet.

Massive roots, some as big around as his body, tore through the ground with a vengeance.

A titanic roar, the guttural sound of a god of the wild embarking on the hunt, broke Naruto out of his stunned, horrified trance. He watched as more and more roots broke through the surface and lashed and waved, searching for something…_me,_ he thought. The tree-thing wanted the fruit. It was the only explanation.

_But why?_

As far as Naruto knew, tree's-even big ones like this one—didn't object to you plucking their fruit. If that had been true, he would have gotten in massive trouble for apple-picking in the orchards as a kid, stealing the ripe-red spheres for his infant brother to gum.

But as he watched the tree as big as a whole mountain range uproot itself and cause the biggest earthquake he ever felt, Naruto knew he was in deep, deep trouble. He looked down at his innocent prize; a small, golden galaxy swirling in his palm, and realized he didn't want to give it up, even if he was suddenly in a Sage-tale like his mom used to tell him. The big bad Monster was after him, and there was no uber-powerful Father of All Chakra to save him.

Not now.

Where was everyone anyway?

Did nobody else realize a massive fucking tree had decided to _break the world_ in the middle of the Land of Fire? But a searching tree root as big as a bus swept towards him, interrupting his thoughts, and he knew he was in deep shit. So he sealed the fruit away into a tiny storage seal his mom helped him inscribe on his wrist, and ran.

Well, attempted to run anyway.

Naruto stumbled, fell, and struggled back to his feet as he made his way up a grassy hill in a desperate half-drunk bid for escape. A crumbling Hokage tower stood tall and dilapidated in the distance. A root wrapped around his ankle as he got his first glimpse of freedom and attempted to drag him back, but adrenaline fueled his angry reprisal. Green-medical chakra sharpened into a three-inch scalpel, covering his hands in a razor-sharp blade which he jabbed through the root in a furious backward swipe. It released him with a screech and he was up and away.

Running for freedom.

**Sgt. Daylum**

Sergeant Daylum peered quickly around the edge of an alleyway and breathed a sigh of relief as nothing leapt out to kill him.

Him and his team moved on, passing through the ruined city and stopped at the edge of a dark, ominous-looking forest. Truth be told, the ominous feeling had more to do with the sensor interference that made it impossible for them to see more than three feet in front of their faces, read anything with thermal, or even use LADAR to create ping pictures, than anything else. This was a kind of sensor blackout that would make any soldier used to complete intelligence and coverage very, very nervous.

But Cerberus paid its troops to be fearless (which Sergeant Daylum thought might be somewhat stupid as assuming someone could be paid to be brave was asking to be disappointed), so they did their best to pretend an absence of fear as they eyed the dark, mountainous tree-thing lying in the center of the vast swathes of pine—or what looked like pine.

As Sergeant Daylum, the fearless leader of this particular band of grunts, put one metal-shrouded boot on the needle-covered path, he stopped. A rumbling sound and a roar like the engines of a dreadnought-class starship ripped through the air. Trees shook, the ground rumbled, and an ominous wind swept up and over them, pushing them back a step with the intensity, and sending leaves swirling around them.

Their sensors went haywire.

Private Jenner, strapped with their recon communications suite, sounded panicked as he briefly lost FTL comms with the Armado. "Sir, I lost the Armado—," Daylum spun to face his subordinate, "Jenner, shut your trap and get them back. Does Cerberus pay you to fuck-up like this? No! Get them back!"

He couldn't see Jenner roll his eyes behind his mask, but the bastard was usually cheeky like that. Everyone knew it was the comms anyway, but he had to keep them on their toes. "Sir, communications reestablished. And uh," by that time everyone in the squad had heard the emergency extraction order.

"Double-time you lackwits, back to the ship! Move!"

The team, five in all, turned and retreated at a fast trot, armor quietly clanking. But they only made it a hundred feet before a tumultuous crashing sound could be heard rushing at them from behind. The squad moved and crouched in unison, taking cover behind the ruins of a thirty-foot high ruined wall at the entrance to the city they'd passed.

Daylum, Jenner, and the other boys watched from behind the rubble as a monster, for there was no other word, cut a swath of destruction through the forest, chasing what seemed to be a human youth. To Daylum's enhanced optics, the youth was covered in blood and filth and seemed somewhat wild-eyed, charging them across open ground to escape the eldritch, cyclopean horror that was very slowly gaining on him. Daylum snapped to and issued orders, heedless of the priority extraction order already in place; he had a hunch this was exactly something his commander would want him to do—but they didn't have time to clear it.

So he acted.

"Tomlin, Jaden, Jenner, set covering fire—Aiken, grab the kid when he gets close—make sure you got 'em. We'll extract back to the LZ after we have him. Got it?" His crack team nodded. "Move."

With pinpoint accuracy from the veteran team, a warp bolt, an M-8 Avenger, a Carnifex pistol, and a Javelin opened up and lances of hot, armor-piercing mass-accelerated rounds tore through the air and burned through several of the smaller roots, earning them a screech they could barely hear miles above their heads, but nothing more. The youth barreled towards them as they laid down a suppressing fire. Daylum aimed carefully with his Javelin and fired, over and over, trying to buy them time. Aiken, to his left, sprinted forward to meet with the youth, speakers crackling as he announced his intentions in English first, then cycling through complex translation software.

The long-haired youth had elfin features and golden hair that was definitely a rarity on Earth nowadays. True blonde hair was very, very uncommon. Genetic modification perhaps?

Daylum dismissed his idle, dangerously unnecessary thoughts as he refocused his fire, taking out the grasping roots reaching for the youth and his man.

What happened next changed everything.

The youth _glowed_ a bit as Aiken approached, the blonde's hands blurred together in shapes and figures ending with a thrusting motion which precipitated visible blue-edged wind lancing outward—a keening sound accompanying it—and it penetrated Aiken's shields like a hot knife through butter, gouging deep cuts in the standard-issue heavy armor.

Aiken stumbled and was hit by a root, face-planting on the ground. The youth stumbled too as if suddenly hit by exhaustion, narrowly avoiding a sharp root aiming to impale him.

His man Aiken wasn't so lucky.

They all heard his scream over the short-wave com as a root as big around as a drainage pipe and sharpened to a point pierced the armor and impaled their friend, lifting him up and waving him around like a grotesque puppet. Blood flew, splattering the ground and soaking the root as gravity took hold of their comrade and slid him off the end of the spear-shaped root. He fell to the ground like a rag-doll and didn't move.

The youth didn't even look back. He was coming straight for them and Daylum didn't have a lot of time to decide what to do; he was angry, shocked, and panicking. He didn't know if they'd have time to sprint back to the ship—and with a hostile…alien? Hostile _something_ on his hands, he wasn't sure of the priorities. They couldn't grab their man's corpse yet, so Daylum decided to take his pound of flesh out on the reason Aiken wouldn't get to see his newborn daughter ever again.

"Jenner, Taser and Stasis that son of a bitch—we're taking him back with us." A grim, 'sir,' came back with a nod, a subtle blue glow springing up around his biotic trooper. "Watch out for his strange abilities, did you see that shit—didn't look like biotics. Be careful!"

Jenner crouched and waited, stun-baton in hand crackling and spitting sparks.

**Namikaze Naruto**

All he could think of as he ran was how much he _needed to get away_.

When that soldier had appeared, he hadn't really thought as he sped through a Wind Release: Great Breakthrough. His control was getting better, he idly noted. The C-rank wind jutsu was one of only two real elemental jutsu he knew. His sensei hadn't taught him very many. They mostly worked on chakra control (not that he needed it) and theory.

He promised to teach him everything after he graduated but…

Naruto shook away dark memories and continued running.

The metal soldier he'd hit seemed down and out, which was all he really cared about. Naruto noted the hazy-field around the soldier fizzled when he hit it with the jutsu. The wind was sharpened enough to cut a person apart and it had only dented the metal. _The hell was that stuff_? Chakra metal?

His preoccupied thoughts meant he didn't see the man/machine die via impaling behind him, he probably wouldn't have cared anyway.

Four more of his metal compatriots seemed to be launching blasts of fire from a box-like weapon at the roots chasing him and he figured, perhaps, they were allies and he shouldn't have hurt their fellow.

But they all needed to leave, so he shouted and hoped they understood him. The other guy was talking strange things and THAT was strange because in all his time going to foreign events and embassies and cities with his Dad, he'd never heard of anybody speaking anything other than the common tongue. This fact was another something his analytical brain filed away. His lizard-brain dismissed the superfluous information for the priority; which was continuing to flee, and flee, and flee some more.

So he did.

In all Naruto's time as an academy student, he remembered only a couple times he'd seen someone manifest their chakra around them like a field. Jonin Commander Itachi had given them a demonstration of the Sharingan and all the while his soft blue chakra had surrounded him.

A couple of other times he'd seen his father, or Uncle Jiraiya, or his cousin Nagato, or even his neesan, Obito-_pain ripped through his mind _at the association—and he stopped thinking.

His brain returned to his point, which was that only a powerful ninja could manifest their chakra in a visible way, but this metal soldier had an electric-blue glow around them that could only mean bad things for Naruto. So he dug deep—something his sensei beat into him (_how can you survive if you can't push yourself further than anyone else will?) _and drew a little chakra to initiate his favor technique; his chakra scalpels. The blades solidified, green razors, around his hands and he dropped into a crouching sprint, hands low to the ground. Only a trickle of energy made its way into his limbs as he pushed his empty chakra reserves to the maximum. He'd probably pass out after, but it was a chance he was willing to take. The tree-thing was too close and the soldiers were between him and freedom.

The soldier met him head on; a sparking baton held in one hand and a free hand gesturing strangely. Naruto and him came together in a fierce clash, the soldier surprised by how fast he'd arrived in his face, attacking. His chakra scalpels flashed forward in a lightning quick jab at vital points; jugular, and artery in the thigh, and skittered off the blue hazy shield. His hands went wide, to the right and left, opening his guard up to a retaliatory strike. A force like nothing he'd ever felt seized his body. He froze like a statue as the sparking baton hit him in the side of the neck and pain blossomed along with a blackness that edged his vision.

Naruto raged and struggled against the hold the energy had on him, but ultimately he failed and started losing consciousness. The last thing he saw was a floating ship in the sky off in the distance, fire erupting from bulging metal contraptions on the back of it.

_What the hell is going on? _

It didn't matter really because he was dead here, he was sure of it.

_Sensei was right…I'll never be strong enough to make a difference. Never…_

Mom, Dad, Izuna…neesan.

The void took him for the second time as memories rolled over him like a wave. Naruto flinched as he saw the first one.

**Sergeant Daylum**

Cerberus Recon Squad Theta's Sergeant sighed with relief as the Stasis field took, then Jenner hit the little cocksucker with a Taser to the neck, and they finally manhandled the surprisingly _dangerous_ blonde kid to the ground.

His team was _safe_.

For now at least.

Rushing and snapping sounds soon heralded the next big problem for the small squad of recon shock troop. That...thing, that horrible monster, was coming their way, roots as big around as a house questing like a massive worm. Its roots reminded Daylum of a thresher maw and if it was anything like those apex predators, they needed extraction ASAP.

He really, really didn't want to have Jaden bring out their one-shot Cain launcher. That would make a mess of things very quickly and he'd have to write like, a dozen reports afterwards. Luckily though, they didn't have to nuke it as the Kodiak dropship came into sight, swooping behind the ruins of a tall building in the center of the once-sprawling city. Daylum took a few helmet camera shots of the city for the lab rats to examine later.

The Kodiak, pretty much the standard extraction ship of every human being everywhere, settled its thrusters downward expertly and held a foot above the ground, hovering in place so the troops could file in. Daylum managed to grab the downed Aiken as Jaden lugged the unconscious-alien? Human?—still limp in the stasis field. No chances were being allowed after Aiken was killed; negligence would not claim another life. Daylum yelled at the two stragglers to hurry it up-the crashing sounds of the massive roots were getting closer.

"Tomlin, Jenner, let's GO we don't have all—"

The stern lecture was interrupted by the sudden massive acceleration of the roots—the dropship swerved and rocked as the pilot expertly avoided the attack.

Suddenly, there were roots everywhere.

Daylum boosted forward with his jetpack, out of the dropship and grabbed his subordinates. They hauled ass back to the ship. A smaller root grazed and punctured his suit as he ran.

_Fuck_.

Daylum fairly threw his squad members into the interior, whipped around and unloaded a clip on the root that had attacked him, heated thermal rounds shredding the largest root, severing it at a thirty-foot point. The door started to close and he jammed himself, armor and all, into his seat. He slapped the button to lock himself in place as the acceleration of the dropship slammed him back into his seat. The armor compensated for it a little bit, but it still gave him a bit of vertigo.

The four of them stared at each other in the interior and Daylum knew they were all thinking the same thing; the roots had missed them thus far, but only because of the handling of their pilot.

They wouldn't be so lucky if this continued.

The pilot needed no urging as they blasted into the atmosphere.

A rage-filled roar could still be heard over the blast of the engines.

_**CE 2172, Milky Way, Horsehead Nebula, Anadius: Cronos Station**_

**The Illusive Man**

A pleasant female voice chimed inside the Illusive Man's office overlooking the cold, dying form of Anadius-a red giant-and roused him from his conversation with another of his pet projects. "Excuse me Henry, my secretary has something for me." The man nodded and the Illusive Man switched the line, "What is it Jana?"

"_Sir, incoming priority one transmission from Commander Petrovsky of the CSV Armado. Shall I accept?" _

Hmm, Petrovsky must really want that promotion-this was very timely of him. And priority one to boot. He nodded acceptance and his virtual assistant patched him through; Commander Petrovsky's ruddy, bearded face appearing on a holovid in front of him, replacing his previous contact.

"Commander, this is a pleasant surprise, I hadn't expected you quite yet. Do you have something to report?" It was obvious from the way the Commander's face visibly struggled with a smile that he—at least—thought they'd found something worthwhile.

_Intriguing_.

"Sir, we've recovered what we believe to be the energy signal from the unidentified planet—it was a human boy. But he had strange abilities. I've never seen anything like it and it didn't seem biotic in nature, sir. The officer that recovered the subject assures me that no biotic power yet found can do what he did. He described it as, 'magic,' sir."

Initially the leader of Cerberus scoffed—magic?

But then, flashes of his run-ins with the meta-turians skipped through his head quickly; he'd had very bad experiences with unknown things in deep space. Could this be another such leap? A meta-human? He needed to act quickly and figure out what they had on their hands, precautions needed to be taken to ensure this didn't backfire. Any advances for humanity they gained from this needed to happen cautiously—if they couldn't control it, it simply wasn't worth it. Of course, there were...other ways they could use to control unruly subjects, if it came to that. But the Illusive Man would make sure that anything they found would work _for _humanity, not against it.

He needed to make two urgent calls.

This just became Cerberus' new top project.

Two quick keystrokes summoned his secretary and Miranda Lawson. He turned his back on them as they entered the room and resumed his call with Petrovsky. He would get his promotion.

"Commander, detour to Minuteman station with the subject, Ms. Lawson will meet you there and get things moving. Dismissed."

The commander acknowledged the order and exited the communications link. The leader of Cerberus turned to the two smartly-dressed women waiting for his commands. Women were so much more capable than men when it came to research tasks and organization. He was immensely grateful for this fact as this would require a high-level of organization and cooperation.

"Ladies, thank you for coming on such short notice, I am well aware of how busy you both are." The two stoic agents simply stared forward. "Commander Petrovsky has recovered something potentially very valuable to our cause. I want to know what we're dealing with here in this new unknown. I want to be kept very much up to date on everything you find in your search for answers. What can it do? Is it human or something else? What are its intentions? _Everything_. That is the only way we'll be able to steer it the way we want. Is that understood Ms. Lawson?" The agent nodded again. "Make a call to Teltin and get repairs started, it's time they came up to date and became a legitimate project." Her face didn't change until, "I'm putting you in the lead; but I'm bringing in help and resources from Project Phoenix to get this off the ground and give you some technical help. You have operational command however. _Don't let me down_."

Miranda Lawson, one of his newest but most trusted operatives (for a variety of reasons) looked determined to give a hundred thousand percent-come hell or high water.

She did owe him quite a lot after all.

"Sir, I won't let you down. I'll make the calls, then head to Minuteman Station to oversee set-up and lab prep. Please excuse me."

The Illusive Man agreed and dismissed her and turned to his secretary, who had remained statue-still throughout the entire conversation. He puffed on his cigarette as he stared off to the side, thinking. "Contact Dr. Angersol; I'd like him to be prepared to receive a second subject at Pragia. You should probably also mention a budget needs be drawn up for reconstruction and the subsequent projects."

The woman nodded. The Illusive Man tapped his cigarette in his ashtray and leaned back in his chair.

_This could be the greatest discovery humanity has ever made. _

Only time would tell.

**REAR ADMIRAL MIKHAILOVICH**

**Secure Alliance Transmission: Priority Code Alpha Green, **

**From Rear Admiral Mikhailovich (Alliance 63rd Scout Flotilla), **

**To: Admiral Steven Hackett (Alliance Fifth Fleet):**

**Security Code: xxxx-1RV4-xxxx-5YT**

To Steven Hackett,

I hate to bother you while you're in that cushy position lording over Arcturus, but I've discovered something very interesting out near Geth space that I figured you might be interested in. One of my scout frigates inadvertently intercepted a Cerberus vessel approaching an unknown energy signal on an earth-like planet near the Veil. I know that you are good friends with Admiral Kahoku-who we both know has a thing for Cerberus-and he will definitely want to investigate this. '

Last transmission the cyberwarfare suite picked up contained the words, "possible meta-human, capture, and interrogate."

He had me at meta-human.

For me personally this is more than enough to warrant investigation and a raid to recover whatever the hell it is they found. We've had talks about this if you recall, but while I agree with the idea of giving Humanity a fighting edge, Cerberus takes it to a dangerous level. On that, if I remember correctly, we are in agreement.

On top of that, I have to report all-hands-lost on a Kodiak I sent to investigate the planet-coincidentally near the area that Cerberus evac'ed from. What the hell am I supposed to tell the families of those marines?

I'm continuing to track the Cerberus transmissions, but I'm not getting much. Please, you will follow up with this, yes? I promise there is a bottle of Stolichnaya Elit in it for you-and not the cheap shit you drink old friend.

Regards,

Rear Admiral Mikhailovich

_**CE 2172, Milky Way, Horsehead Nebula, Unknown, Minuteman Station**_

**Agent Miranda Lawson**

Her boots echoed on the steel floors of the orbital facility. Miranda Lawson looked straight ahead, ignoring the stares of the male technicians and soldiers, as she navigated the labyrinth of Minuteman. She bypassed three separate automated defense stations with the odious looks of her fellow Cerberus coworkers divesting her of her clothes mentally as she walked by. It was truly loathsome—she wished she could dish out much needed discipline, yet alas, she was new yet…

That would come eventually.

She'd had had to break some bones when she first joined up in the outfit as an officer. She had been on the run for a while from her father, Henry Lawson, and it had made a lot of sense for someone with her kind of...modifications...to approach an organization whose main goal was to elevate humanity from the galactic muck. Miranda had wanted to be a part of something bigger than herself—on the cutting edge of galactic events as it were and she'd certainly gotten her wish when she joined up.

Already she was assigned to a prestigious research project—one regarding a mysterious new alien to boot. What more could she have asked for? Cerberus had given her safety, had given her life meaning, had saved her sister _and_ guaranteed her safety so long as Miranda worked for them.

It wasn't even a hard choice.

She loved it here.

The final checkpoint approached.

Project Phoenix, an ongoing look into physiological augmentation in humans for biotic purposes, was originally housed here. She had several of those scientists working under her now. The Illusive Man had stated that this was a new, untitled project that he wanted incorporated into Project Phoenix when information was procured as to its efficacy one way or the other.

It was ambitious.

It was visionary.

It was just the kind of thing Miranda wanted to work on.

The Cerberus operative typed the security code, shifting the security plates to align correctly, and tolerated the eye-scan, stepping into the high-tech laboratory when it finished. The laboratory, covered in monitoring screens and various work stations, overlooked one of their most secure testing rooms. Those testing rooms had housed an almost extinct rachni warrior, a pissed off krogan, and even a meta-turian (probably the last one in the universe). Her fellow researchers and scientists considered it somewhat overkill to lock their newest, most unintimidating subject in their most obsessively secure room. But she wasn't putting anything past a being who could collapse a shield with one blow using what seemed to be hardened wind.

A being that could control the very elements…well that was something you prepared for regardless of what he/she/it looked like.

The room held a single, scrawny blonde-haired youth strapped to an operating table. He looked like he was out cold, head lolling to the side against a hardened, upright operating table. He was hardly the enemy they all pictured; this boy would barely come up to a krogan's waistline. He'd give a salarian a good run for thinnest humanoid in the galaxy though.

She snorted quietly as she watched the kids eyes move back and forth under their lids. The team noted that he'd been in REM sleep the entire time as his eyelids were constantly fluttering and his brain was still indicating sleep waves. She stepped closer to the almost foot-thick ballistic glass designed to withstand impacts from charging beasts of all sizes and gave him a once-over like she did every single time she came in here.

He'd been here almost a week.

They'd kept him heavily sedated and it looked like each time they tried to feed him more, it required upping the dosage again. She was certain that today was the day he'd wake up, regardless of how much they gave him. The lethal limit had been met and she couldn't afford to risk his life just to keep him unconscious.

She stepped forward, tapping a researcher sitting at a workstation on the shoulder and he turned with an annoyed expression that cleared as soon as he saw who it was that was bothering him.

"Oh excuse me Ms. Lawson. I apologize for not seeing you, I'm Dr. Sigurd—we were just going over his test results." He cleared his throat, looking up at her embarrassedly, "We've made some brief analyses, but it's hard to go further until we know what we're looking for. Already it's _beyond_ fascinating. Here, take a look."

He handed her a data pad with a plethora of scrolling information; height, weight, blood type, cholesterol level, body fat percentage, etc. All very interesting, as it were (for instance, he was much denser than a normal human), but the real surprises came the further down they looked, into his very cells. She looked up at the subject and gave him a hard stare. She noted, again, that his hair was a color that had almost been bred out of humanity at this point. True blonde was a color that was recessive in nature, and you didn't find it naturally occurring very often. Besides that, Miranda hadn't expected how human he would look—how frail and innocent while sleeping.

_How like Oriana in her youth._

She felt a twinge of conscience, but ruthlessly suppressed it.

Dr. Sigurd returned to his seat to pour over more information with a manic intensity. She continued to evaluate the subject against the information she had in front of her; his arms had muscle definition, but not excessively so—and his fat percentage was extraordinarily low and generally speaking, he was the picture of health. That is, if you discounted a number of worrisome factors; that his palms bore blade scars, as well as his arms, and chest, that the youth, probably no more than fourteen years of age, was thin—excessively so—and he showed extensive signs of torture, of trauma, of malnutrition, and intense scarring around his right eye—which oddly enough was a dark brown as opposed to the sky blue of his left. It almost looked like someone had done a hasty transplant on his eye, but that was impossible as there would be more scarring than the miniscule amount already there.

She shook her head, continuing to flip through his file.

Sergeant Daylum had reported that he used his hands in rapid sequences before activating whatever power he used to short out Lieutenant Aiken's shielding. As a precaution, she'd had them strap his arms and his hands down to prevent him activating it—whatever 'it' was.

Hopefully that precaution would make a difference and prevent any accidents.

The boy had quite a history buried inside him and painted over his skin; from the scars, to the hard lines around his eyes, the pinched look on his face while he slept, the screams they sometimes heard from him before they could up the dosage again. Miranda had seen that kind of look and feel more times than she could count, but only from the special operations community. Noted calluses and scars from handling bladed weapons indicated a high level of close-combat experience, add in the obvious torture, and the well-executed retaliatory strike against Cerberus troops...well, it didn't a genius to tell they were dealing with something very, very used to danger—if not combat. But the stuff that they found in his pouches gave them a bit of a different impression; strange herbs, medical tools and equipment, gauze-like fabric and other obviously medical-related paraphernalia were packed into the pouches.

What to make of this?

She needed to think more about this.

The file she was looking at stopped scrolling at a collection of pictures; spectroscopic analysis, X-rays, thermal imaging, magnetic resonance scans. She tapped the researcher on the shoulder and tilted the data pad so he could see what she was looking at, "What is all of this in his body?" The body seemed covered in crisscrossing pathways that weren't for blood.

The researcher shook his head wryly and spoke as only an exhausted, stumped researcher could, "Frankly Ms. Lawson, we have no idea. It is what looks to be a whole separate arterial system snaking throughout the organs, the muscles-even the brain. It's centered on what seems to be about three hundred and sixty-five separate loci around the body. They seem to be nexus points for the strange energy inundating the body. It's really, really hard to get a good scan on him because of that interference. He seems to have additional organs that we're not sure do anything." The researcher scrubbed a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and scowled down at the reports. "They seem like biotic nodules and at the same time are _nothing like it_. Our hypothesis is that the extra system is what generates the energy used to produce his abilities, but we have no earthly-idea about what it is, how it works, _why it's there, _or even how it developed. He's not only human, but _more_, a mixture of human DNA base pairs and something unidentifiable."

He looked up at her, blood-shot eyes laser-focused and fever-bright despite his exhaustion, "This is something we've never, ever seen before and will probably never see again. What the hell is that other piece in the DNA? Frankly, I'd love to do a dissection, but honestly? We'll never know more unless we ask him…which means we need him alive."

Agent Lawson nodded thoughtfully, not letting her feelings show on her face.

Most of the research team, she'd found, felt the same way as Dr. Sigurd. Dissection would be invaluable, but ultimately foolish as they had absolutely zero information to work from. They needed to interrogate him before they considered that option; and only to further increase their knowledge once they wrung him out.

It looks like it was time for her to go to work.

**Namikaze Naruto**

Naruto, unconscious, dreamed of a night of blood, fire, and revelations.

It was the night that changed everything.

Shadows danced high above the bright-lit floor of the Daimyo's ballroom as fire illuminated the massive space from hundreds of sconces encased along the red marble walls. Soft music drifted out from among the open-columned face of the massive palace as a thousand guests mingled and clustered in small groups, talking, eating, dancing, and conveniently avoiding the raised dais containing the Lord of the Land of Fire, the Fire Daimyo and a select group of people.

The man was his father's boss.

Naruto, even at six, knew how incredibly important this night was to his dad, the Hokage of Konohagakure. His mom had made him promise to be on his best behavior, but she didn't need to worry—he wanted to be Hokage just like his dad and there was no way he'd misbehave now of all times. He refocused on the conversations that were going on around him.

A pair of brightly-dressed nobles stood two feet from his father and he couldn't really understand what they were talking about, but he listened anyway, "…the price of iron from up north is rising steadily. We've haven't heard _anything_ at all from the Land of Iron and Mifune is strangely absent while the Land of Demons is stirring!"

He shook his head and moved on, gliding through the figures around his father and the Daimyo like a tiny ghost in a formal black kimono, he passed close to them and heard, "Shinno has made ever increasingly absurd demands! Does the man really think we'll capitulate like that, or turn over a portion of our population to satiate his bloodlust…?"

Naruto's father, as calm as ever, sounded reassuring—like when he cut himself on a kunai and it hurt really bad and the amount of blood made him panic. He used the green light to heal his hand and it was all better. Naruto listened as his father spoke,

"As we speak, I'm working on a plan to combat the resurgence of the Land of Sky. I promise you that you are safe for the moment. The man is shrewd and wouldn't be foolish enough to attack you here." The Fire Daimyo fluttered a fan in front of his face. Naruto could make out the sweat on his forehead in the light.

Naruto sidled up next to his father and a strong hand came down to automatically ruffle his hair. He looked up to see his father's sky-blue eyes—much like his own—smiling down at him.

"Madam Shimji, my lord Daimyo, have I introduced you to my eldest son Naruto yet? Say hello Naru."

He scowled at the childhood nickname, but smoothed his tiny face as he looked up at the fat woman and her husband—two very, very powerful people according to everyone he'd listened to while spy—uh, wandering.

"It is an honor to meet you Madam, lord Daimyo."

Naruto bowed low as he'd been taught, and smiled for all he was worth when he came back up. Hokage's needed to smile, even when they didn't want to, or so he'd been told. But at that point, the wife of the Daimyo decided to pinch his cheeks—hard. Naruto bit his tongue and drew a little blood as she yanked on his pale cheeks, cooing.

_How awful!_

He managed to catch his dad's eye and it seemed to him that he was laughing at his son's plight.

Laughing!

Naruto scowled at his dad around the fingers manhandling his face. The daimyo watched with amusement as his wife assaulted the Hokage's eldest son, turning his head to speak with the Hokage after a moment, "You are sure of Shinno's intentions?" Naruto watched his dad's reaction, his face smoothed and lost its smile. "From all reports, yes. He will not attack such a gathering. Besides, in all modesty, you have me." At this, Naruto smirked. Apparently the Daimyo had the same thought as Naruto because he visibly relaxed, his delighted grin returning.

Nobody would attack while the Yellow Flash of Konoha was watching.

Naruto's poor face was saved by his Aunt Tsunade, a legendary figure for more than one reason. The Densetsu no Sannin were heroes of story and her story was made more incredible by the advances she'd made as the Head of Konoha Memorial Hospital. Naruto ate up the stories she told him about her and her team's exploits.

He wanted to be just like her.

"Hey Naru, bored yet?"

She smiled at him as she pried him out of the clutches of the Daimyo's wife with murmured platitudes and a lot of purposeless blithering. It irritated him just to hear it. They left his dad and the Daimyo, along with the devil-woman, behind. They were making their way towards the massive columns that framed the entrance to the garden. The cool night air washed over Naruto's hot face, ruffling his blonde locks, as they exited the stuffy palace. The two of them walked off to the side, near a trellised garden and leaned against the railing overlooking the massive topiaries that covered the palace grounds. Naruto had never seen so much wealth in one place.

Even at six, Naruto knew the Daimyo was an incredibly rich man.

It all seemed so pointless.

"Hey auntie, what are you doing here?"

"Can't your favorite aunt swoop in and save her nephew without an ulterior motive? Jeez."

He just lifted an eyebrow and stared at her. She caved a minute later.

"Kushina wanted me to drop by and see how you were doing. She was worried that you would get bored or—god forbid—tuck yourself away in a corner and read a book or something. So here I am."

"Well, I'm fine. Mom _can stop being so nosy_. Go report that." Tsunade smirked at him. "You can tell her that yourself. I was sent to fetch you. Izuna is being fussy again and it's almost your bed time brat."

Naruto folded his tiny arms and almost stomped his foot—almost. With a supreme effort of will, he stopped his face from showing his inner scowl at the entire universal unfairness of it all.

How was he supposed to become Hokage and rule when his lessons were cut short? By a bedtime no less…

He felt, rather than saw, his aunt tense, all levity gone. Something had spooked her and he could feel the chakra rolling off of her. A dark feeling swept over the grounds; someone else's rage, pain, and agony hit him like a freight train and he ached for them. He fell to his knees shaking. Bile tried to come up and he hacked a bit while a grip like iron encircled his arm and hauled him up. Dizziness hit him and he stumbled into the busty Sannin at his side.

Screams and shouting reached their semi-secluded location.

"Come on Naruto, we have to get you somewhere safe." His head spun so much it was hard to think, but he nodded and followed as best he could.

Then he remembered his father.

His dad was somewhere in the middle of the screaming mass of people streaming out of the columns. The Hokage had an obligation to protect his people, so he'd be there, right? He wasn't safe. Not like Naruto. That wasn't very becoming of a future Hokage; you couldn't be safe when your people were in trouble. All of these thoughts rushed through his head while being tugged along like a sack of flour. He couldn't help himself as he looked over his shoulder at the palace, just in time for his vision to go white as a massive explosion blew out the right side of the building. A concussive shockwave swept him up and his ears rung and he couldn't see through the dust.

The hand he'd been holding disappeared and he found himself sailing through the air, covered in dust as he impacted something hard.

His vision went totally black.

When he came to, he was in a topiary, partially stuck. Tsunade was nowhere to be seen. Flames licked at the hole in the building as he wobbled upright, his kimono singed and in complete disarray. It made it hard to walk, so he tore it off and shivered in his tee-shirt and shorts. Nobody was here to see he was cheating anyway.

Slowly picking his way amongst the bodies—some alive, some obviously dead—he avoided looking at them as he made his way towards the now rubble-choked opening he and Tsunade had taken to leave the party.

A massive battle greeted his eyes.

Flying things soared overhead as a yellow blur struck with concussive force against a massive giant of a man, covered in rippling muscles, in the center of the Daimyo's palace. The Fire Lord was nowhere to be seen. His dad's trademark techniques, the Flying Thunder God and the Rasengan, clashed against a black and red orb held in the palm of the enemy's hand. Naruto's heart leapt into his throat as he saw his dad fighting.

"I've reached the pinnacle of medical techniques Minato! I have the perfect body. You don't have a hope in hell of stopping me before I kill your lord! My message will be received loud and clear. Nobody will save you; they will have abandoned you just like the Land of Fire abandoned the Land of Sky all those years ago!"

The man's yellow eyes glowed and it scared Naruto terribly; they were what he imagined the monsters in his stories looked like; pitiless and filled with rage against the people he loved.

All too willing to cause pain and suffering.

The two techniques, black, red, and blue, met and Naruto ducked instinctively. Even ducking behind rubble almost didn't save him as another explosion rocked the palace and sent debris flying. Out of the corner of his eyes, from his position behind the rubble, he could see Auntie Tsunade—bloody, torn-up, in a rage—break into a blurring charge, taking out a pillar just before she landed a brutally savage right-hook straight into the face of the man fighting his father and a veritable chakra explosion added monstrous force behind her punch.

Naruto heard the cartilage and every bone in the man's body break as he was launched backwards like out of a cannon. The man's head spun around unnaturally as he was sent as a human missile into the marble wall of the palace which broke under the weight and force of Tsunade's punch and Shinno's weight.

Dust flew and it was a wonder the building still stood.

Naruto mentally cheered.

Here, the Naruto watching the memory as a ghost recalled how he felt watching those titanic figures in his life duke it out against the would-be assassin; a sense of righteousness and pride filled him as he knew his father was doing something worthwhile, protecting their way of life, as was his aunt. Both of them were laying down their life to defend each other and their ruler. How different it looked now that he was different.

It seemed so easy then to believe in good things; in healing, in saving, in protecting. The things that drove him into the arms of the devil.

The smoke cleared and Shinno stood there, one foot on the rubble of the wall, another hand bracing against the side, looked bigger and meaner than before. Black and red ropes of energy—chakra, though not any kind of chakra he'd seen before—spiraled around the awful-looking man, seemingly healing him. Naruto strained to hear what he was saying.

"Ah, the greatest medical ninja in the world—and _a woman_ to boot—Senju Tsunade. It is quite an honor." Naruto couldn't tell if he was mocking. The bow he made looked genuine. The man raised hand and slowly started walking forward, gesturing grandly.

"Indiscriminate killing is most definitely not my style—no, I've come for a purpose and you two stand in my way." He tapped his lip with one finger. "The Land of Sky is a patient of mine and she's withering away, piece by piece, and is almost gone. I'm here, as a good doctor should be, to fix our ills by destroying those who caused the problem in the first place. That's what you do when you find a virus right Madam Senju? You starve it out? Make sure it cannot live and so—die?" A maniacal smile crossed his face as he flexed and started to sprint at his father and his aunt, still motionless, seemingly shocked.

"You LEFT US TO DIE!"

With that shout, he crossed the intervening space as a black and red blur and the battle was on as he slammed a fist into Tsunade's chest. Naruto heard multiple ribs snap.

Naruto didn't think he understood a lot of what was happening…Konoha abandoned him? Was that what was going on? That didn't sound like his dad; his dad would _never _abandon anyone. The guy had to be lying.

That had to be it.

But, there was so much he didn't know…so many things. Why would this man attack the Daimyo? Naruto wanted to understand. The sounds of battle slowed as he crouched there shivering; where once it was a cacophony, it became muted. He peeked his head out and couldn't follow most of the battle, as it raged all over the place, but it seemed like his dad and Tsunade were pushing the guy back.

But Naruto was confused.

Tsunade and his dad seemed like they understood what the man was saying. If they understood, why were they fighting? Did it make the bad guy, Shinno, right in his claim that we abandoned him?

What was going on?

Naruto stared absentmindedly out at the rubble, the bodies, and the cool night sky—covered in a thousand, thousand twinkling lights. He heard more ninja arriving behind him, the sounds of battle growing fainter. He hadn't noticed before, but flying things were moving in the opposite direction, retreating. Maybe there were battles in other places too?

Lightness appeared on the horizon and all the sounds had stopped. A hand on his shoulder shook him awake. He'd been out of it apparently…he hadn't noticed. His mom's worried, frantic violet eyes were welling up with tears. She grabbed him in a hug and he didn't even notice, exhausted and confused as he was, that she was covered in burns, tears, and blood.

He was safe again.

"Oh Naruto, I was so worried! Tsunade said she—well, I'm just glad you're alright baby." She ceased hugging him and held him at arm's length, giving him a once-over as he lay slumped against the slab of white marble column, before looking back up at him and peering into his eyes.

"Are you alright Naruto?"

He stared for a few seconds before his eyes welled up with tears and he grabbed his mom in a desperate hug, "The bad guy said we abandoned him, mom. We didn't do that did we? Dad wouldn't do that would he?"

Naruto was visibly frantic at this point. The ghostly Naruto watching remembered the deep confusion and pain only someone whose whole world was ripped out from under them could have. His deeply-set moral compass was based on something questioned, perhaps a lie, now and he needed to be reassured. At six, the sun rose and set with his parents, but most especially with his dad. The Hokage was his hero, a shining example of greatness; selfless, powerful, and kind.

His dad didn't deny the man's claims against Konoha and he couldn't' remember a time where his father was ever at a loss for words. That meant something, he knew it.

Kushina looked taken aback. Her fire-red hair in disarray, his mother absentmindedly smoothed it back and spoke quietly, gathering him up in her arms and moving towards where tents were being set up and people were gathering at a makeshift triage center. Naruto saw medic-nins, a people he had new appreciation for, moving around utilizing green glowing chakra in their hands to save people.

He wanted to save people too.

"It takes you seconds to break a cup or a bowl when you run for ramen, but how long do you think it would take to make a new cup or bowl. Do you know how to make those things? Naruto, it is always harder to create something, or heal a festering wound, than to destroy or cause pain. Do you understand? It is simpler."

The eldest son of the Hokage thought long and hard; how did this relate to what the man said? But as he thought about it more, he was starting to understand, in as much as a six-year old could understand, the idea his mom was trying to convey.

He slowly nodded to his mom. She continued.

"Your father had been talking with that man you saw for a while now, trying to heal us both and create a bond between our people. He trusted Shinno not to do anything to jeopardize the fragile connection. But attacking the Daimyo tonight was the last straw. Your father was sad because he realized he couldn't heal them—it was too hard. The man didn't want to listen and the cycle continued."

Naruto understood this much now; healing was hard. Harder than anything else. Hard even for a Hokage.

By the time the two of them had made it to the makeshift outpost, the sun was farther up in the sky and Naruto knew it was about the time they'd usually get up. He saw his dad, auntie, and a couple of other people he was familiar with talking. Izuna, his annoying little brother, was only a year old and the Hokage held him with a tight grip. When he spotted Naruto, both Tsunade and him fairly teleported over to see if he was alright.

The sentiments were nice, but the events of the night were all he could think about. It was almost an hour later when the hubbub died down and Naruto, freshly scrubbed clean and in his frog-covered pajama's, made his way over to his softly-chatting family; his aunt, her teammate Orochimaru (someone he hadn't had much contact with), and his parents, rocking Izuna to sleep, with a few other people standing guard behind them were gathered around a fire. He walked right up to his aunt Tsunade, sitting at the edge of the firelight and gathered his courage. He drew all eyes to him, the dancing flames reflected off his determined blue eyes so like his father's, as he stared at the group with an intensity they'd never, ever seen on his face.

"Teach me how to do what you do; to heal."

A riot of emotions crossed the Head of the Senju clan's face as whispering started. Naruto kept his glacial-blue eyes fixed on her golden ones. He knew this was his calling; to heal and create where others destroyed. He needed this.

His mom started to speak, but his dad laid a gentle hand on her arm. She quieted.

Tsunade spoke softly, hesitantly, "Naruto, I'm not—"

He dropped two frog-pajama-covered knees onto the dirt and bowed his head in total supplication.

"Please teach me!"

But he saw her hesitate and he felt the door shut on him before he even heard the words, "No, I'm sorry—I'm far too busy with the hospital and my apprentice…and tonight…I couldn't even take care of you for two seconds. I…I'm sorry, but..." _You look so much like Nawaki._ _I almost failed again tonight. _

_It can't happen anymore._

She turned away from him and he felt his stomach drop.

Tsunade, it was said, could heal anything short of death and was a legendary Sannin to boot—it needed to be her! He felt tears prickle at the corner of his eyes and angrily scrubbed them away as he turned from the group. Deep inside, he knew this wasn't the end—he'd do it on his own—but that wasn't the point.

He'd show them, he'd show them all, he knew that…but…

Off to his right, golden eyes with slits like a snake gleamed in the firelight and a voice spoke up that sent everyone up in a clamor that drew the watch of the ANBU.

"Fu-fu-fu, Tsunade-hime, I'm ashamed of you—turning down such _potential_ for such an accident like that. I would _kill_ for an apprentice like the eldest son of the Hokage" The Snake Sannin's eyes widened comically and he waggled his fingers as if he had a thought, "But wait—I've just had a novel idea!"

Kushina had to be restrained by Minato as Orochimaru of the Sannin pinned Naruto with a hypnotic stare. It was a stare as mesmerizing as the power lurking behind the genius ninja. It was inquisitive, trying to see all possible futures for his apprentice. It was obvious what he discovered pleased him greatly as Naruto could feel his power flex and saw the curving lips and fangs behind the smile. A caricature of a smile really; pleased with a bit of cunning, and unexpectedly delighted at the same time, and he knew he had a unique chance to train with one of the greatest ninja to have ever lived.

"I'll train you, young Namikaze, but you have to get the _Hokage _to agree."

Both Naruto and Orochimaru turned to look at Minato; one hopeful, one calculating. Minato Namikaze's face was hard as he looked back and then around him at the faces staring back at him. He looked at his son's pleading eyes and turned to Kushina, sharing a look.

"Dad, mom, please—I'll-I'll do anything!"

She turned away after a second, shoulders slumping.

Naruto was five years old when he realized he wanted to protect, heal, and create.

He was twelve when he realized life wasn't that simple or easy and never, ever would be.

_**CE 2172; Asphodel, the station formerly known as Teltin, on Pragia, in the Horsehead Nebula**_

**Miranda Lawson**

The transition from Minuteman Station to the new facility, a facility they'd started taking to calling Asphodel, as homage to the fields of the underworld in the Grecian mythos (legends and tales that resonated strongly with their boss), went as well as Miranda could have hoped. It turned out that the subject stayed consistently unconscious for the whole ride. His brain activity was off the charts and they assumed he was in a particularly vivid dream—or perhaps a memory as some suggested.

So they waited.

And while they waited, they moved him to a new high-security wing of the Nest, locking him up deep in a cell designed for their most dangerous of experiments. It held Subject Zero before this new one, so they knew it could stand up to godly temper-tantrums.

She'd had Subject Zero moved further down into the general holding area as they'd started fitting everyone with electronic collar tags that monitored electrical activity associated with implant activation and biotic activity. No biotics on their watch, that was for damn sure. Especially with enough voltage to drop a Krogan mid-charge.

Miranda made sure there would be no mishaps.

At the moment though things were calm. Miranda was settling herself in a comfortable chair facing their newest subject; the subject they'd taken to calling Sunshine, referencing his unique hair color. Miranda was sure they'd have to revise the name after they found out more about him. Somehow, it just simply didn't fit the picture she already had of him in her head. It called to mind cute, fluffy things and rainbows and Miranda was very sure this subject would be far from anything resembling a rainbow. He'd brutally left one of their soldiers to die out on the field and expertly retaliated against a veteran soldiers most determined attacks—it was obvious he hadn't encountered anything like them before or he wouldn't have tried reckless hand-to-hand maneuvers against armored targets.

No—definitely no rainbows here.

A spike in the alpha/beta brain-wave monitor had a lab technician giving her a big thumbs up. She stilled her fast-beating heart and affected a calm demeanor and a pleasant smile as the youth shuddered, stilling as his different colored eyes opened and closed again in the harsh lighting. Sunshine struggled to move and stretch as his hands, legs, and chest were bound to the metal chair. She smiled and spoke; confident, but reassuring.

"Lie still. You can just listen while you get situated and comfortable, then we'll let you go. I'm Miranda Lawson and I run this facility that you are currently in—on behalf of my organization, I formally welcome you to Asphodel." He didn't respond and simply looked around with blank eyes. She kept her smile up.

"Let's get started shall we?"

* * *

A/N: Annnnnd that's a wrap. Holy shit what just happened? We see a little of Memoirs here at last with Miranda and her motivations...though those are typically canon. How about Shinno and Minato huh? Plus Tsunade? Did everyone understand a little bit about what was going on behind the scenes? You might not get a lot of backstory on that... but we'll see. It does play a big part in the environment Naruto is growing up in. Not quite as idyllic as we had thought...

Till next time folks and as always, drop me a line to see what you liked, didn't like, hated, or _loved_. Thanks guys!

Cheers,

Arte


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